krisalis

This page is starting to look a little bare, huh.

Mark and I are off up to Newcastle today for a day or so, and then we’re going to Sydney to see in the New Year.

I love being on holiday.

I just thought you should know that in addition to the regular toppings of sliced tomato, onion and a bit of lettuce, Australians like to put beetroot on their hamburgers.

Made it to Canberra safe and sound.

I landed into Sydney, tired and bleary eyed early, very early on Saturday morning. Crumpled and scruffy, I made my way from the plane to passport control, clutching my passport and entry card in one hand and my hand luggage in the other.

When I reached the front of the line, the Passport Inspector Man plucked my documents from my hand and held them up for observation.

“Well, yeah, you’d have to be, wouldn’t ya?” he said. “Whu?” came my confused reply. “Says on here your heading to Canberra to visit friends and relatives. ‘S the only reason to go there, innit.” “Ah.” say I, unwilling to say anything, lest I offend the man who has the power to prevent me from entering the country. ” ‘S like Australia’s very own New Zealand.” I smiled weakly. “Alrighty then. On you go. Happy holidays.”

Pictures from Christmas, 1982. Documentary evidence researched and provided by my Dad. Love it.

Did I mention that seeing these pictures has made my day?

I’m off to Australia in a couple of hours, for a couple of weeks….

Here are a few oldies, to keep you entertained while I’m away:

• Permanent

• Twin Peaks

• How (not) to pack

• Trip to Melaka, Part I and Part II

• Tiger Balm

I’ll probably check in every now and then while I’m in Oz, but in the meantime, hope these’ll keep you busy.

Merry Christmas!

In 1982, we were living in East Kilbride, Scotland. I was 7 and a bit years old. My sister Billie was 5, and Katie was just over 2 years old.

It’s the first Christmas I can remember with any sort of clarity.

Billie and I woke early, as children are prone to do on Christmas morning. We huddled together in the dark beside the bannister at the top of the stairs, waiting for permission to come down to the living room. When Santa rang the jingle bells , we raced down into the living room to see what he had brought us. (Santa always rang jingle bells to signal his departure from my house.)

We opened presents and threw balled up pieces of torn and crumpled wrapping paper for our dog, Misty, to chase. She was just a pup at the time, and took great delight in chasing and capturing the missiles. Mum tried to keep track of our presents, scribbling notes on a pad of paper, so that we could write Thank You notes to friends and relatives. Dad snapped photos and slurped mugs of hot tea.

As Christmas morning wore on, and the sun rose weakly in the winter sky, I realised there was no snow. Where was this white Christmas that everyone had been singing about? I was perplexed. Fortunately there were other distractions…

Billie and I hit the present jackpot that year. Our parents gave us each a mini arcade game. I got Pac Man, and Billie got Space Invaders. Little did we know when we unwrapped them that we would have to fight fiercely in order to play with these new gadgets.

We weren’t fighting each other either, or even with the neighbourhood kids. No, this was a whole new battle. We had to fight off Dad and Happy (our grandfather) to play with our noisy toys.

In the days that passed after Christmas, Happy took a special liking to Space Invaders, and spent what felt like hours at a time crouched over the tiny screen, moving his fingers at lightening speed, and swearing under his breath when he lost a life.

Billie and I took turns playing Pac Man and peering over Happy’s shoulder, admiring his skill at reaching level 8, but wishing he’d hurry up and let us play. I don’t know how many packets of batteries we went through in the week after Christmas, but it must have been a few.

I wish we’d kept those games.

Update: According to my Mum, I got the year wrong. It was 1982, not 1981, and Happy’s favorite game was Pac-man. Apparently he used to giggle while he played! I don’t remember that, but she’s probably right. Mums usually are.

According to Vanessa, Krisalis is mentioned in today’s edition of Singapore’s Computer Times (weekly IT supplement in the Straits Times ), which is simultaneously pretty cool and somewhat scary. However, they incorrectly printed the URL as krysalis.org, instead of krisalis.org .

Ah, well. I guess that means I get the feel-good factor from the mention, with out the freak-out factor that lots of random people are suddenly landing here.

If you are a new ‘random’ visitor, why not drop a note into the comments below, just to say hi? Go on, it won’t hurt a bit!

Update: The on-line version of the Computer Times article is here.

Update #2: Here’s a scanned picture of the article that features Vanessa and mentions this site. It loads as a pop-up image.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve gradually made the switch over to Mozilla from IE.

I love the “open links in new tab” feature, which allows me to surf other sites within the same main window (like having multiple word documents open at once, you can just click between them).

I still use IE for Hotmail and internet banking, because those particular sites don’t agree with Mozilla very well, but with a few exceptions, I’m a solid Mozilla convert.

The one feature that I have missed in Mozilla was the Google toolbar….so I was thrilled to find this Mozilla friendly Googlebar linked from Rich’s site. Ace.

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at the current craze of marble magnets, but haven’t been able to locate all the necessary supplies. I was going to wait and get the glass marbles in Australia over the holidays, but inspiration struck while I was writing Christmas cards….

More magnets in progress. Now I’m using pictures from freebie postcards.

I had my hair cut on Saturday morning. The salon was pretty busy, and most people were there to get the obligatory pre-Christmas haircut to appease their parents or loved ones.

I overheard the girl sitting at the chair next to me telling her stylist that she had arrived home from University for the holidays, and that her mother had promptly shipped her off to have her locks tidied up.

The guy sitting on my left at the wash basin was in a similar situation. He was happily chatting away with the hair-washing girl, telling her how he was there for the pre-Christmas hair chop, so he’d look somewhat respectable when he met up with his wife’s family.

The hair washing girl was in small-talk mode, asking little questions to keep the conversation flowing. The usual, ‘Going anywhere for Christmas?‘, ‘Got plans for the weekend?‘ type questions, when she inadvertently hit the jackpot with ‘Have you finished your Christmas shopping?‘

‘Yes. All done.’, announced the bloke, sounding satified.

A couple of silent moments passed, as the girl thought of the next topic for idle chatter, when the guy suddenly spoke again. ‘Although, come to think of it, I haven’t actually got anything for my wife yet.’ ‘Has she dropped any hints about what she’d like?’, asked the girl, trying to be helpful. ‘Hmm. Maybe. I don’t really know.’, came the perplexed reply. ‘Anything with diamonds then!’, announced the girl. ‘Not on this years non-existant bonus!’ ‘Ah. What about lingerie?’ ‘Can’t see that going down well when she opens her present in front of her entire family and ancient Catholic grandparents on Christmas day.’ ‘Umm, clothes?’ ‘Can’t win with clothes,’ he sighed. ‘If they’re too big, I get in trouble, and if they are too small, I get in trouble.’ ‘Vouchers?’ ‘Yeah. ‘Cause nothing says, “I love you” quite like a book token.’ ‘No, get them from her favourite shop. Most places sell them.’ ‘Nah. I want to give her an actual something on Christmas Day.’

They both fell silent for a while, each one thinking of gift possibilities.

After a minute or so, the bloke spoke. ‘How about perfume?’ Pause ‘I know – I’ll get her a gift box set, with the body lotion and all that. Yeah.’. He sounded pleased. ‘There you go. Just as well you only have to do this twice a year, eh?’ ‘Yeah.’

Silence.

‘Except her birthday is on December 29.’