The blog is back

It’s been a long while, but now that I’ve found my blog again, it will be making a comeback.

Thankyou to all who had followed in the past.

Steve

Last weekend just gone

I thought I would share about the weekend I just had up here. Although I didn’t exactly ‘do anything’ physically as such, it was one of the most enjoyable. Why?

Well. There’s a Go-Kart track out here, and they had a come and try day. So with some friends, we wandered out there to have a go and just be there. As it turned out, all we did was ‘be there’. Because there wasn’t enough daylight for us to have a go in the karts. But it didn’t matter. Those of us that were there just had a great time standing around talking, about everything, about nothing, and having fun.

Afterwards we went back to a friends’ house and ordered pizza and watched Top Gun and even Edward Scissor Hands. It was a night of the classics. But there was much fellowship and enjoyment in it all that we could have stayed and yacked for a much longer time, had we didn’t all have to get up earlyish the following day.

Something worth enjoying – good friends and good fellowship.

Getting involved in town

So, I’ve been lazy on the writing stuff on this blog front. But, that’s okay. I’ve been busy with other things. Anyone who know me well, would quickly realise that I can’t just sit and do nothing. I’ve got to get involved, out and about and just doing something with a project somewhere, or something. 

Tonight I’ve just been out to the Sprint cars in Broken Hill with the SES helping with safety and stuff. We didn’t have any major crashes and things which was good, ’cause although I was assigned to it, I didn’t particularly want to play Fireman Sam. 

I’m starting to fit in down there and find my place in a unit of about 15-20 regulars.

Hey, my grass is starting to grow! Yes. It’s green. Well, in patches. I may have to think about a lawn mower at some stage. I wonder if stealing a goat would be out of the question. I remember seeing hundreds on the road from Mildura to Broken Hill.

Last weekend, I flew down back home for a wedding of two friends. It was really good. The wedding, and seeing lots of people again. I don’t plan on coming down too often to Melbourne because of the cost, but each time, it’ll be worth it. Strangely enough, I even managed to turn out with Paky SES while I was back. They were in a bit of shock when I wandered in.

The house I’m living in up here needs work I’ve decided. If it was mine and I could afford to, I’d rip out the walls in the back part of the kitchen, put in plasterboard and fix it up. Tiles need to go up around the sink and wet areas too. And, the biggest thing. I think the main kitchen window should be replaced with an aluminium frame sliding window so I can see out the back. At the moment it’s a louvre window and someone’s stuck a blue tarp on it! It may stop the wind, but it stops the light! I’d also put insulation in the roof of the kitchen too, because I don’t think there is anyway.

Work is going well. I’m still just making ads and things. Some are good that I enjoy hearing, because they sound great. Others are just ok. It’s hard to give a plain voiceover extra spark, when it doesn’t have any… Well, sometimes I can ‘hear’ an ad in the script and imagine how it should sound. Then I make it. Other’s are just plain. But it’s all good. We’ve got changes coming to the studios in the future, which we are looking forward to. I’m content working there, and the staff are cool and we all laugh and enjoy ourselves. It’s funny, just like LightFM, we’ve got upstairs and downstairs staff.

Anyway, I’m off. It’s late and I’m tired. Enjoy. Bye.

-Steve

Do I miss home? Yep.

Well, it’s been a long while since I’ve actively kept this blog current. Why? Nothing interesting to write I guess.

Tonight I sit here in South Australian time in a building owned by the Broken Hill Church of Christ. What is the building? Well, it’s an old convent they purchased years ago. Now it’s lived in by a few church families and it is also used for temporary accommodation – such as myself. I’m in a long skinny section with 5 bedrooms all coming off a hallway, which has a little kitchen in the middle of it all. I’ve got it all to myself, and my stuff is scattered up and down the hallway.

They have been very generous here at the church. On Sunday I went to their service with mum and dad just before they left back for Melbourne, and it’s a bit of a family church. They are pretty close and very friendly. Anyway, so straight after church, everyone filed out, jumped in cars and drove 4 blocks to someone’s house. 2 people got baptised in a backyard pool! It was pretty cool. Then we all came back to church for a lunch, where I hung out with a few blokes my own age, which was nice.

Today, I went to work and made radio ads, I even had to voice a few. It’s a little challenging at the moment, as I’m still getting my head around how the system still works here. It appears that there have been a few people doing production – like myself, and so I’m going to be working through getting a little more order amungst the organised chaos on my pc. But I’m happy to say that things are going forward.

The outside temperature today was about 32. I wore jeans and sat in my little office with the air conditioner on! My biggest concern? I’ll get pastey skin! I don’t exactly want that. I haven’t got a window in my room. I have speakers, a computer that occasionally crashes, a mixer and a little recording desk, oh and a squeaky chair. But no window.

I think I’ll bring in a picture of the beach.

Today I went for a walk after work to get out and about. Thanks for the call dad!

Well, that’s enough from me.

I still haven’t got a house to live in and I’m starting to loose faith in real estate companies as they don’t keep to their word of calling when they promised they would.

London
New York
Paris
Pakenham
Rome

Do I miss home? Yep.

Apples and Oranges…

Oh, to have money to invest right now…If I was rich, I reckon I’d buy shares in Apple. 
Why? Well, they’ve just released figures of their best ever quarter in history, with earnings at $9.6 billion.Not only that, their share price, like everything else at the moment, has plummeted to $150 or so, from a staggering $200. This in my opinion, is that there is only one way to go from here.Up! Apple Share Price  In 6 months time, tell me if I’m wrong. If I was wrong and you invested… well… I’ll say sorry now.  

Ah, Christmas. Not long now!

Ah, I love this time. As I look in the bank account and wonder how I’m going to afford things, I smile and remember that it’s seasonal.For good reason too. I’m very fortunate that I’ve got a close/tight family and lots of them and that we all get on well, without fights and things that I know other people have to go through.We had yet another family do Sunday, with probably 30+ people all crammed in to my Auntie’s house. Did I know them all? No. Does it worry me that I don’t? Not really. It’s just great to be there amongst it all. This was once again, one section of my tree. Grandpa’s side. So his brothers and their kids, kids etc…But it’s made me wonder I guess. What should I get people for Christmas. Now there is no way I’m going to be buying for the entire family, just my immediate family and a couple of selected others. But what do you get for everyone? Do you regift? Or are the usual socks and jocks too far out of the question? This year it’s a bit different.Andy’s now married and moved out, so with Christmas being a little different, we buying presents differently this year. We buy a (or many) present(s) for 1 person up to a certain value, and that way we don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on stuff that people don’t want or need.I’ve already got mine organised. And I didn’t even select it! Very nice I thought. I’ve just got to pay for it now.Completely changing the topic now, I’m going to be house sitting for the next few weeks in Doncaster. Which will be a nice little change, instead of driving a long way each day in traffic for work.Work has been really great recently. I’m doing stuff I love with some awesome people and I just enjoy it. What more could ya want really?

Things of a pondering nature.

So, here I am. I’m past 25, living at home and without full time employment. I know that I’ve written about this sort of thing before, but it’s not a thought I can remove easily.Now, not that I don’t enjoy living at home with my family, but I think for myself, I need to start to think about moving out, and actually doing something instead of doing nothing of significance.I knew that I had Monday off, and potentially Tuesday this week, as my boss at the labour hire company was going to call me when there was work again. Cool, no probs. So Wednesday came, and he told me that they were right and I wasn’t needed. Which is great… sort of.Waking up at 9am or later is fine for a while, but then when you do nothing, or go from the computer to the tv and vice versa, it sucks.I would love to have a job that I enjoy and am good at.I would love to move out and be more independent.Am I watching life go by and missing out? I don’t know. But doing nothing at home is boring, non-innovative and unproductive. It’s like being stuck in a steel cage on the corner of the Flinders Street train station and seeing everyone walking past and not being able to join them in life. 

Love On The radio…

I remember an Aussie band, who are now living in the States, called Alabaster Box.
They had a hit song Love On The Radio.
Why tell you this?
I think probably to say that I’m loving this whole idea of radio, not only being on the radio, but working in that industry. 
Sure, I’ve been working in the field in different capacities now for a while. I’ve done web, proof reading, audio production and monitoring, panelling, recording and other stuff in between. That even involves making a camp radio show too. I guess now though I’d like to try my luck at a bit more on air type role – if possible… 
Wouldn’t that be fun. “Hey this is Steve FM” or something like that. ha ha
Even if that doesn’t eventuate, I quite enjoy the current role I do at LightFM at the moment. But I guess I’d just love there to be more work available, instead of the odd shift here, or shift there. 
It’s a great place to work. The people are cool, the work is something I enjoy and there is usually good music too. Oh, and there is coffee. What more could you want???
The more I look in to this path, I see that there a plenty of jobs around. But most of them are in advertising/sales and things. I guess if I look hard enough, I may find something where I can slot straight in – without having to wait 10 years before a vacancy opens up… 
Well, Lord willing, it just may happen… 

Ah, the family weekend…

 Well, here I am listening to Brooke Fraser, pondering the weekend that’s been.  

Yesterday, after going to a church working bee in time for bacon and eggs and enough time to take apart a fence, I went to Portarlington, a little past Geelong. 

Now, you may wonder why, correct?I went for a family function where people from Sydney, Adelaide, and even New Zealand had travelled from. So, you would think that it would have been a big event right? Well, it was. 

150 years ago, a guy by the name of Thomas H Widdicombe built a mill in 1857 that has a massive history in the region of the Ballerine Peninsula. 

You can read more about it here and learn about the interesting heritage of the building. http://www.zades.com.au/port/mill.htm 

The occasion was hosted by the volunteers who now look after the Mill, with entertainment by a woodwind section of the Royal Australian Navy Band, the National Trust, and a local State Politician. 

So we had a good time and had a chance to learn more about this little mill. It made flour, produced bricks, and other stuff for the area, with many bricks still around in the area. They are however a little bit hard to get hold of now though.

A time capsule was also sealed up on site with students from one of the local schools putting a whole bunch of stuff in it. Things included were photos of their classes, a newsletter, a Geelong commemorative AFL thing, and lots of other historical type school things.

It was a good day. Mum and I travelled over there, as Mark and Andy were working and dad’s still recovering from some surgery. 

Today, we had a smaller family gathering at Uncle Des and Aunty Margaret’s house, both of which are mum’s aunty and uncle, but all the same that’s what we call them. There were probably about a dozen of us there. But I guess one of the most interesting things I discovered was how I am related to the Thomas Widdicombe guy who built the mill. I also found out a few other things too. You have to go through 5 generations to get to the famous guy.

Now it’s a strange thing this family history and very fascinating. I learnt mum’s great grandma had a Spanish father. So I’ve got a small part wog in me! ha ha… ok, doing the maths that would be… 1/64 Spanish! Kinda cool I thought! Catharine Penaluna was her maiden name, before she married Tom Chalmers. 

I’m kinda enjoying all this family tree stuff. Kerryn and I penned down nearly 50 people, which is 6 of my Grandma’s siblings and their descendants. It’s really cool.

So, we are now going to do a bit of family history tracking. It is going to be a huge process I think, because there are so many people to trace and track, and it all depends of which way to go. 

I was sitting there saying to mum, what about such and such, and she was like, “No, they are on Grandpa’s side”. “Oh, oops, wrong side again!”. 

My family is big. ha ha… A mate agreed with me the other day and said, yes, it’s so big I’ve dated two of your cousins! 

Anyway, enough of me. I’ve got a big project to do! So far this is only on mum’s side! So if you end up being related to me… it’ll be really cool!!!

Here’s a picture of the mill. Click on it for a larger view.

 

Family and work…

This weekend I’m going to a huge family reunion down on the other side of Geelong. From what I understand, someone several generations ago worked or built or owned an old wheat mill, so we are going. I guess the family is very important to me. Probably because I can’t choose them, but also because no matter what happens, I’m always going to have them! It’s funny, ’cause I’ll usually choose a family event over other things.But I love Christmas! It’s when we have about 20 or so of us all crammed on tables, usually with someone stuck on a card table at the end, and everyone wearing those stupid paper hats, and telling really dumb jokes. It’s so cool, because we all get on so well, and quite often, even with 10 in the room, we often keep talking louder and louder and louder to be heard. I know others don’t have the same enjoyable experience at that time of the year, but I know how blessed our family is. It’s just special. Roast lamb, and turkey and usually a chicken. Vegies are served up with gravy and pees, there is often a ham too that is sliced up and dished out. Then, when we have all eaten our full and drunk lots of soft drink, and eaten the Christmas pudding  - with custard I might add… it’s time for the presents.  The day always goes well and at the end, all you want to do is have it again.That is the story for mum’s side of the family.Dad’s mum died a few years ago, and we now don’t make the trip down to Geelong every year to see her Chrstmas or Boxing day. We don’t really see the rest of dad’s family. His brother is around somewhere, and our cousins we very rarely see too. It’s a realy shame. I’d love to hang out more, but it just doesn’t happen. Dad’s sister and her family live in WA, so that makes it a little to do Christmas with them, but even though it’s a rare thing to see them, we still make the effort for weddings.So as you can see… I like my family. My work at the moment though is a little non-existent. I’d love to have a full time job in something I love… whether that be in radio, some tech role or possibly youth work, it’s got to be better than sitting around hoping for a job. That’s why I’m not in marketing / sales. I’m not a salesman. Even if I was, there is no way I could sell something that I didn’t have full faith in. I couldn’t sell junk and rip someone off. I just couldn’t really.Hmmm… Well, where to from here? I wonder. At the moment, I’m thinking of going back to labour hire, ’cause I need to so something with my life and use the God given talents I’ve got.