the howie

As you know I spent the weekend sleeping in a makeshift slum.

Each night as i couldn’t sleep due to discomfort I would stare at the ceiling of the slum which happened to be made of empty cardboard fridge boxes.

I noticed something that you are going to find profound and life changing.

There is no ‘d’ in refrigerator. I have never noticed this before. Why is there a ‘d’ in fridge?

It should be pronounced re-frig-erator which sounds like some sort of nautical dinosaur.

So i’m thinking of starting a bring back the d campaign called ‘Plan D’.

Dave Andrews has ‘Plan Be’ all about bringing the beatitudes to a prominent place in our churches and personal faith.

Plan D shall attempt to return the D to fridge boxes, I’m pretty sure koorong will back me and sell my book.

No ‘d’. I’m still shocked.

‘Om’ has moved out, On sunday he came over to do some extreme vacuuming and remove 18 months worth of toe jam, dead skin and un-opened bank statements.We have decided to turn tom’s old room into a study/ spare room as my working from home situation has been impaired by my desk being smooshed in behind the wardrobe in our bedroom.

So today we did lot’s of moving and rearranging of stuffs.

Jenny even got me a sweet sign for the door.

The space behind out wardrobe will now be a storage area.

this week shall involve a meeting or tow, video capturing and sleeping in a cardbaord box in the melbourne burbs for the weekend.

As you know, I’m watching a bond movie every week. The old bonds on the whole are pretty good films but some standout flops have been ‘On Her Majesties Secret Service’ with auusie george Lazenby as bond, he is the crappest bond ever. The next film that was dumb is actually the next film ‘diamonds are Forever’ it just was dull.

But that doesnt matter i’m having a great time watching them.

I shaved on Saturday.I’m eating brownies and that is you up to speed on my exciting life.

I just installed google chrome and it doesn’t seem to like the idea of spaces in between lines and new paragraphs.

With a title like that you are probably expecting a rant about Eddie McGuire and his brigade of puffy blue commentators at the winter Olympics that doesn’t have snow.

Well that’s not what this post is about.

Today i had the best idea ever.

Fresh fruit salad + ice magic

I know it’s the sort of idea that could get me the Nobel prize.

The fruit salad was chilling away in a container in the fridge, so i got it out, added fruit to my bowl then poured on the ice magic.

I waited a few minutes but the ice magic didn’t go hard.

Maybe the fruit wasn’t cold enough.

So i put my bowl with all it’s contents into the freezer.

The ice magic still didn;t go hard.

So the best idea in the world has some flaws.

Why didn’t it go hard? Is there some sort of chemical reaction between ice cream and ice magic?

I was in the lift coming up to the office earlier today, and as I do every time i’m in the lift alone, I look at myself in the big mirror.

I noticed that there is a big hole in my beard of nice smooth skin that feels like it has never had hair growing on it. And on the other side of my face in the same area there is beard, not thick but there is defiantly hair there.

In October I’m going on holidays with my wife and son.

We are going to New Zealand.

I hope we don’t regret taking an almost 2yr old overseas, but how could we resist when he is free!!!!!

In January I had 3,008 unique visits to this blog.

That is the first time it has ever gone over 3,000.

Surely there is more interesting things to look at on the internet.

Like this. 

Jenny wants me to blog about all the stuff I have sitting on our stairs that needs to be put away in the shed and other places. Maybe she figures blogging about it is a step closer to putting it away.

I told her that wouldn’t be a good blog post.

I’m right.

Tomorrow is Australia Day.

would we be so patriotic it there wasn’t a public holiday?

Jesus left a comment on my blog but it was taken aside by my spam filter. I didn’t expect him to ramble so much, he speaks so well in the bible. Also did you know he was from France?

Good Day. Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
I am from France and also now’m speaking English, give true I wrote the following sentence: “Criminal justice, bright sources in the london threshold career from same stations with a jeopardy of hundred opportunities together to un-democratic means going a thousand or more groups.”

Thank you so much for your future answers 8). Jesus.

I ran out of soap the other day. So i’ve been using some liquid crap that jenny uses.

Today whilst in the supermarket i remembered i needed soap. So we pulled out the ethical shopping guide to see what sort of soap I could get.

We found a happy brand and I read the boxes looking for a flavour that wasn’t too feminine.

There was a few interesting things written on the box, like ‘450g (when packaged)’. When packaged??? does my soap have an over eating disorder and by the time I take it out of te box it will be 500g?

It also says ‘3 times more moisture’. 3 times more moisture than what? 3 times more moisture than a brick?

doesn’t soap get moisture whn you put it under water? why does it already come with moisture x3???

And ‘mild enough for the whole family’. Far out who wants to rub a spicy bar of soap around their sensitive bits?

anyway there where 3 flavours to chose from. Spring Garden,  Forest Breeze and Fresh Linen

I chose ‘Forest Breeze’. I’m hoping now that i don’t walk around smelling like pine needles and murdered backpackers.

the murdered backpackers might explain the 3x more moisture though.

1 Cup full cream milk powder
3/4 cup of white sugar
1 1/2 cups tea leaves (or just chick in a bunch of tea bags)
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (you can also use cinnamon sticks)
1 teaspoon of cloves
1/2 teaspoon of ground cardamon

chuck it all in a bowl and mix it up,

then use about 1 tablespoon of this mix for every cup of water you boil.

easy.

After my weekend living in a make shift slum I have been lying low.

It was a tops weekend but i’m wasted. I didn;t sleep at all on Friday night.And i had a run a bunch of activites all day on Saturday and Sunday so by sunday night when we finished lack of sleep plus 2 small meals of rice and dhal a day took it’s toll.

I spent a lot of yesterday in bed sleeping and it seems i’ve picked myself up a cold too. I would like to really complain about it all but i guess it just makes the whole simulation a little more realistic.

sorry it’s not an exciting post, I did stub my toe badly on a heater today if you are wanting something to smirk at.

I’m running a weekend long simulation this weekend called ‘Slum Survivor’ at a local Church.

It involves living in a slum for the entire weekend and only eating 2 meals a day of rice and dhal.

Plus a whole bunch of challenges throughout the weekend. Because I’m running it i’m the Slum lord and it’s my job to dish out pain and discomfort and also collect money from the participants as they earn enough money to survive in the slum.

It’s a pretty full on experience for those taking part.

Anyway today I spend the morning mixing spices and powders together to make the dhal and some chai mix.

After inhaling all the smells of an Indian spice shop I loaded up the rickshaw with a bunch of stuff, heshen sacks., banners, and a big box full of hammers and gloves and plastic.

Jenny helped me push the rickshaw up the hill, as it has no gears and weighs more than 5 Americans.

So we pushed and pushed. Sweat was dripping down behind my sunnies and if my shirt was white i would have won the national wet t-shirt comp.

We made it to the top of the hill so jenny bialed and i got on for some pedaling.

I pedaled along the pacific highway (on the footpath) which was nice and flat, lots of people staring at me and one lady telling me i had a very pretty bike.

Eventually i got to the street that has the church on it and it’s downhill. So down i went with the rickshaw breaks squeaking like a late pubescent teenage boys voice box.Then i remembered the church has a friggen steep driveway.

I got to the bottom of the driveway and hopped off. I began pushing very very slowly taking millions of steps ans there is no room between the pedals and the back seat of the rickshaw to take big manly steps. It was hard hard pushing. Not being able to see behind me I had no idea there was a massive line of cars creeping behind me trying to get up the driveway to a funeral.

I had to stop halfway up in a little flatter bit to refill my lungs and squeeze out my shoes form all the sweat dripping down. It was at this moment I realised there was a long line of cars, what could i do?  I tried to pull over as much as i could and a few cars went past. I got going again when the driveway was clear. Stage 2 of the steep driveway was underway, just as i began stage 2 another bunch of cars appeared behind me. And there was people everywhere all dressed in suits and fancy dresses watching this sweaty man push a overloaded rickshaw up a steep driveway. I’m sure they where angry at me for interrupting their funeral car parking.

Eventually i made it to the top and found a spot in the corner to park the rickshaw. I walked home with jelly legs and a salty face.

I ran out of Metamucil and while you don’t care, this could be explode into a sloppy ending for me. Metamucil changed my life. I have IBS as a lot of you would know and when Metamucil came into my life I became a new man. I run like clock work and it all holds together like cookie dough…mmm cookie dough, probably not the best analogy to use seeing as i love eating cookie dough..oh well.

So I needed to go get some more and also some rolls for my lunch tomorrow.

So off to Westie I went.

I noticed some clouds creeping up behind me.

Being Me I didn’t take an umbrella.

I did my shopping in woolies and also picked up some discounted hot cross buns, good thing you can buy them now for Easter because they stay fresh for at least a day.

I then went in search of an umbrella in woolies.

Fail.

So off to 24Hr Kmart I went.

I looked around hoping to find a rack covered in umbrellas but found nothing. After a while i went to the front desk to ask. The lady said “Yeah we have them, just head towards women’s underwear” .

So off i went down the wide path towards ladies dainties.  I passed a rack with sunglasses, then handbags, then to my left was ladies clothes and right undies. Surely the umbrellas are close to this centre path. I kept walking up and down the path a few times.

then i found them. They where down to one side of a very narrow isle in the middle of bright pink g-strings and D-cups. I had to go look though, but what if someone walks past, from behind it would look like i was looking at pink g-strings not umbrellas. So it had to be a stealth operation. I power walked into the isle and decided to grab the first umbrella then get out of there.

The first umbrellas was leopard skin patterned.

I had to stay longer, I couldn’t walk out of the g-string isle with a leopard skin umbrella.

Eventually I found a nice masculine black umbrella.

Don’t men use umbrellas anymore?

It was a good thing i managed to get that umbrella.

I walked home in the rain, mostly dry.

I also walked past a take away shop where a man was standing outside stuffing money into his shoe.

Don’t men use wallets anymore?

I feel liken a little kid on his first day back at school after the christmas holidays.

Last night I went up to westfield to drop off my suit pants in the dry cleaning machine in the hope they can remove the bolognaise sauce Oscar put on them at Jo and Victors happy party.

After inserting my pants into the machine i decided to visit the 24hr Kmart just for fun.

I ended up getting a metal box to put some of my tools in and also a little container for screws ad bolts and stuff. My current tool box is more than  overflowing.

But then on the way out I got distracted by the big stationary section having a back to school sale.

I love pens, oh I love them. I know you probably didn’t pick me as a pen man, but I love them. I’m quite particular about the pens I use.

I stood there for a good 15 minutes looking at various twin packs of pens and then I found a $6 bag of pens, all pretty good pens and a few pacers too. I couldn’t resist. so here I am back at work for the first time time this year and I have my new pens. All I need now is something to write down.

I’m also using my new monitor for work.My eyes have been getting stressed lately and the super eye guy said i should use a big external monitor to try and reduce the tension in my eyes. So my employer hooked me up with this 24″ monitor.

I’m also using the magic mouse that Jenny got me for Christmas.

After reading about my consumer happy day you will be relieved to know that today I also started reading a book. I’m reading ‘Advent conspiracy - Can Christians change the world’. Before you stab me for reading a book about consuming less after the gift receiving season, it’s because i got the book after Christmas.

I can’t remember the last time i read a book, or finished one. Reading makes my eyes and brain go crazy but this book has really large text that is well spaced so it shouldn’t be as a big a problem as normal. also unlike the old school days i’m interested in what the book has to say.

I might even write about it on here when i’m done. feel free to leave comments reminding me to keep reading it as reading is a not a habit i’m used to.

you may wonder how a 27 year old chap working for an aid and development agency spending his days educating young people can get away without reading book after book. Well It’s not how I learn. Having broken eyes means reading books is a real struggle and it only takes a few minutes before my eyes are sore and the words on the page are flying all over the place and I can’t keep track of where i was so i spend my reading time trying to focus on the reading and my brain has no power left for absorbing the content.

On the whole the way I learn seems to be from conversations, watching others and the interweb.

and no talking book don’t really work.

A storm approaches the coast just north of bulli earlier this evening.

Photo courtesy of myself.

I ate my two rolls as soon as i got to the office this morning, so with my wallet bulging with left over Christmas money I decided to get myself a healthy turkey sandwich from the cafe with the cool french waiter. I ordered my TLT on toastet turkish bread and waited near the counter.

A guy and a girl walked in and past me up to the tables. As the guy walked past he smiled at me and said “Hey Howie, how are ya”. I replied with “good thanks” but by the time i had finnished ‘good’ he was gone.

I have no idea who this person was, And if I did know this person I would probably remember them as he looked like he was from African roots, black skin and short little pointy dreads but a thick aussie accent.

We had a family friend when i was little whose name was Oliver, but if this was Oliver he would only know me as Robert.

Who are you friendly man??????????

We bought a little usb powered film scanner the other day so that Jenny mostly, could scan in negatives of all her old photos and sink facebook’s photo server with all her photo uploads.

We had a little trouble getting it to work with snow leopard but a friendly man at the Australian distributors office sent off an email tochina or wherever and 2 days later they emailed me a patch.

It works pretty well and makes the  images huge. over 5,000 pixels wide just from a tiny negative.

i took these photos but have no idea when, i think it was probably with my parents old SLR camera so i’m guessing it was around 2000 or 2001