buter's BABY blog

You may have heard that the Australian Government in all its wisdom, provides a non-means-tested baby bonus payment of about $4000 for a newborn. They even go so far as to ensure 16-year-old mothers get the payment in a form of pension rather than a lump sum to make sure it's spent on the baby and not on booze or drugs or stolen by non-well-meaning relatives. Personally, I think it's a way for the Government to assuage its guilt over not creating better industrial relations provisions for parental leave.

It's a very sad thing that Australia's population growth from birth is so low. A sociologist I heard on the radio once said you can directly correlate the declining population growth with the rise in female education. It makes sense too, as potential mums are spending more time getting educated and starting careers, than starting families. But what's not being acknowledged by the Government is that those potential mothers are sticking to their careers for longer before having children because they need to save up money to be able to raise said kids, because once they leave to have the baby they are suddenly bereft of income. Then the Government wails about cost of childcare, and how they can't provide enough subsidised places for all the kids we're having, but mums have little choice but to go back to work so they can pay for the mortgage and all the bills as well as paying for childcare. It's rotten.

Some more enlightened nations have legislated parental benefits. Like, up to 2 years' paid leave from work - you can have your children, and still cover your mortgage repayments, and what's more you can choose when to go back to work, with the benefit that your child has had the chance to grow up a bit with at least one parent at home all the time, you're not entirely broke, and you can still go back to the same job you had before. Don't get me wrong, some employers here do offer a period of paid parental leave, in fact there are some very good places in that regard, but most only offer the minimum required by law. Which is, 12 months' leave. Unpaid. 12 months in total, that is, so if you happen to have some annual leave available and you choose to take that instead of unpaid leave, you still can't have more than 12 months away from your job. So in our case, I've had 1 month annual leave - before Peanut arrived - and I get 11 months with her before I lose my entitlement to go back to the same job. 11 months with no income, that is. Just to be clear, I wouldn't give up Peanut for anything, and I definitely wouldn't want to be back at work right now with her only 11 weeks old.

Oh, and the baby bonus? That went towards our private medical bills - we avoided the public hospital system for a reason.

So, I finally gave in to peer pressure, or something, and signed myself up to facebook. I mean, what else do you do when the baby's gone to sleep? I'm counting this as my "me" time!

D™ threatened to disown me, but I said I'd take the baby if he did so he desisted for now. I think it's still potential though ... But I must say it's kind of fun trawling through finding people and seeing how they present themselves to the world... I've found most of my high school chums on there (they weren't exactly pressuring me, more like "don't join facebook, it's such a time sucker") and also friends from primary school as well as ex-colleagues and family. So it's kind of fun.

One set of pals started a scrabulous game with me, because I was dissing facebook and online scrabble so much. The starting word was "CURN".


I'm familiar with the word "KERN" as a term used in publishing, something about the spacing between letters, but what on earth is a CURN?

I asked the scrabulous dictionary and here's what I got:


Uh-huh. So it's like, a real word? And on a triple word score and everything!

I guess I shouldn't trust a dictionary written by someone who made up the word "scrabulous", right?

It's an interesting thing, to think about how you learn something. I'd go so far as to say, the way that you learn influences how you deal with unfamiliar situations. If you're a person who learns best by reading or by listening to someone else talking to you, it's possible that you handle new situations differently from someone who learns by doing. Even more than that, I bet it influences career choices too. If you learn by reading/listening you may be more likely to feel comfortable learning in an academic environment, i.e. university, than a vocational environment, so you're more likely to end up with a desk job than a trade. Maybe?

Anyway Lifehacker posed the question: find out how you learn. So I did the survey and discovered I'm a visual learner, but balanced verbal and non-verbal - I learn best from visual materials whether it's text or images, compared to learning by doing or by listening. Well, I knew that already! Anyone who's tried to give me directions will know that. I basically can't find my way there again if someone else has driven me there, or if they tell me the directions over the phone. If, however, they write them down (or I do) then I'm fine with it - ditto for map reading. That's what they're for after all!!

Since I'm not currently pursuing any academic learning, what does it matter what my learning style is, I hear you ask. Well, it's a funny thing but I think surveys that tell me about myself are more useful for telling me how to deal with other people than anything else. So, if I'm a visual learner and I write someone some instructions, I get frustrated when they don't seem to get it. After all, if it's written down that should be enough shouldn't it? But for many people, I guess it isn't really. So instead, maybe I need to figure out what *their* style is, and present the information accordingly. Or, to be brutally honest, the person receiving the information should know what their style is, and request the information accordingly. As in, I know I learn best by reading, so I ask for written information. Simple, eh?

... on rereading I realise there's some pent up bitterness in that last few sentences, you can tell that I may have had trouble training people in the past. Maybe I'm not such a good teacher as I am a learner :)

It's been raining a lot lately. So I've been watching Weeds. No, not the garden kind (though that happens too after rain) but the TV kind - a cute little show from the US about a housewife in one of those suburban communities where all the houses are rammed up next to one another and are all built according to the same set of plans. You know the ones. The theme song has been running through my head for *days* now and it's driving not just me but D™ insane. As he puts it, it's bad enough getting a song stuck in your head. It's so much worse when the song stuck is not the actual song but someone else's (i.e. mine) poor reproduction of it.

Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes, all the same.

There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.

Of course the song was written about American suburban development but as in all things cheap and nasty we Australians have to follow suit. Think fast food - until the American franchises started here we had our own excellent burgers at all the local takeaway shops. Burgers should have salad on them. With beetroot. And fresh minced steak. Not plastic cheese in a sweet bun with a frozen semi-meat patty slapped on.

So I'm (still) really glad that we were able to move somewhere that isn't made of ticky tacky but is all bricky bricky. Even though we haven't got a lot of heating yet and as I write this I can see my breath. Indoors. At 9am. I have lots of warm clothes!

You ever have one of those days where it seems you didn't sleep right, and you end up all fuzzy through the day?

Yeah, I had one of those yesterday.

I've decided therefore, that 5 days weeks are bad, we should have 4 day weeks for the main part, with the bonus that public holidays mean that we get a 3 day week every now and again.

This would solve so many problems!! There's the problem of long weekend traffic on the not-so-common 3-day weekends - Friday night traffic out of the CBD is utterly crapola and so if there was a 3 day weekend every week it wouldn't be so bad, since you wouldn't have 250,000 extra people all driving up to the Central Coast on that one long weekend, instead some of those people would drive up next weekend. Because they can. Of course you could say instead that every weekend the traffic will be utterly crapola, but I think that wouldn't happen. After all, we don't all drive up the coast every weekend already, why would we do it when we have a 3-day weekend every week? I'm sure it's only the specialness of the 3-day weekend that makes the traffic crapola.

Another problem solved would be the midweek hump day, commonly known as Wednesday, when weekends seem so far away in either direction. If you only have a 4-day week, no hump day, since on Tuesday the weekend was only a day or so ago, and on Wednesday, the weekend is only a day or so away! No hump day makes for no boring Wednesday-itis where all your coworkers look depressed because the weekend is so far away in both directions.

And here's a thing - having a 4-day week would help out all those Soccer mums - instead of losing a quarter to half of the weekend ferrying kids to and from school sports on a Saturday morning, and thus having less time to do grocery shopping, household cleaning and all that boring stuff, there would be the option to carry out the sport thing more spread out (no more 7am starts in winter...) or get it over with all on the one day and then *still* have a whole 2 days to do all the family catch-up stuff.

As for economic sense - since it seems most salaried workers in Australia work at least 10 hours a day anyway, but only get paid for 8, why not keep pay rates the same (i.e. paid for 40 hours) even though we're only working 4 days - that way we actually get paid for the hours we work, rather than the hours we are nominally employed for. Doesn't that sound fair? And maybe it would make the workplace more efficient too.

Look, to be fair, I think it would even work if we didn't all take the same 3rd day - some people take Friday and some Monday - the Sat/Sun common days are enough for sport, social events and all that, and meanwhile we all get our extra day.

Hey. I heard the public service can sort-of do this already with flexi time. Why isn't that standard for the rest of us?

now watch me disappear in a puff of ill-humoured smoke ..... grummble rummble grumf ..

I've discovered something today.

Stories published in newspapers are quite likely to only present one side of any given story and in this age of internet debate, the fact that I can't add a comment to any news story that I want to (unlike on a blog, for example) is quite annoying.

Anyway what's got me hot-n-bothered now is the Shlock! Horror! idea that technology is taking kids' time away from their parents. You can go read the whole thing, but here's the key quote:

The research by telco AAPT has revealed that 16 to 20-year-olds spend an average of 3.2 hours a day using technology.

This compares with just two hours of face-to-face communication spent with parents.

Almost half of the 1000 parents surveyed believed two hours was not enough time and would prefer about seven hours of face-to-face time with their children throughout the day.

Ok. But "telco AAPT" didn't ask, or didn't report, whether parents have ever been able to get 7 hours of face-to-face time with their children.

Wouldn't kids be diverting their time to playing outside, hanging out with friends, watching TV, hiding in their rooms, or on the phone, anyway? This is just a new way that they are not spending time with their parents. I'd be surprised if there are many families out there that get 7 hours of face to face time together daily where there is a TV, DVD player, VCR or even separate rooms for goodness' sake.

Jeez, D™ and I don't even get that. Not on weekdays anyway - maybe we get 4 hours a day? Some of which we spend watching TV so make that 3. Some of which is spent separate because of personal hygiene reasons, so make that 2.5. Some of which is spent separate because (for example) one of us is cooking and one is watering the garden. So make that 2. Oh dear. Technology has a lot to answer for doesn't it.

Although it is funny that the other day he said to me, "I read your blog at work because you're not there and it's like having a conversation with you." While being an alarmingly cute thing to say, it does support AAPT's other finding:

Despite this, almost 80 per cent believe technology has dramatically helped their family to stay in contact.

So there you go.

Edit:
D™ and I just spent about 1/2 an hour playing with Cozi. In the same room. With our backs to each other. In order to become more connected. Life's like that.

So, Premmia Iemma has sacked a minister for reasons which might be related to him being a man or might be related to domestic violence against women - "Australia says no" and all that. But Iemma denies the second reason, saying it's solely to replace a woman who left with a woman. (Isn't that positive discrimination anyway???)

The Liberal (and media) stance is that it's all about the domestic violence thing and that the press conference was a farce. Barry O'Farrell's comment though, is pure gold.

The Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, said Mr Iemma's statement that the decision had nothing to do with the violence allegations was "like saying the Easter bunny's got nothing to do with Easter".

I guess Bazza O'Fazza hasn't heard of Jesus? Or maybe he was just emphasising that he actually agrees with ol' Morrie.

Either way, my opinion on the outcome of the last NSW state election is reinforced. It's just too too depressing. I'm in the 126% of people in NSW who don't like either party (from disapproval ratings of 59% for the incumbent and 67% for the opposition).

You ever have one of those days when you shoulda just stayed in bed?

My Monday sucked - I agree, most Mondays suck, but especially when your day goes like this:

• got to work, that bit was ok, thought "i'd better put some dollars into my keycard account" so logged in to ANZ, sent the transfer, all seemed hunky dory
• called MBF to upgrade our hospital cover .. well that failed because apparently even though anyone with my mbf card can do it over the internet, I can't do it over the phone .. sheesh
• went to eastgardens at lunch, but started by turning the wrong way out of the driveway..
• finally managed to get there, so went to the ATM to get that cash I shoved into my keycard account, oh it seems I neglected to hit confirm at the new exciting second confirmation page of my internet banking so the extra cash was missing (at this point I should have given up)
• went to Target to try to exchange a funky cardy that I bought on Saturday that D™ reckons was too big, the woman helpfully took it from me at the refunds counter and gave me an exchange note, then I spent 15 minutes getting lost in an unfamiliar Target and then finally walked out cardy-less because not only did they not have the cardy in my size they didn't even have it in the slightly wrong size ... or colour ... or anything ...
• got takeaway for lunch, finally, and didn't really want it but I knew I needed it ...
• nearly lost my car in the carpark, pretty much chose an aisle at random to walk down thinking I had ages to go to get to the car and then discovered it was on the other side of the aisle I'd chosen - purely by chance ...
• got back to the work carpark and someone had taken my space .. had to randomly trawl for a spot in the sunny zone on a different level of the carpark to where I normally park
• got back to the office, sat down and only managed to eat half the takeaway because it was just .. not very exciting ..
• was putting the leftover in the fridge (this was about 1.50pm) when dude walks in looking like he wanted me for something, I said "what you after?" he said "that meeting you scheduled, I'm here" .... me: o_O ".... ? Oh. *That* meeting. Right. Let me just get my notebook ...."
• had a meeting from 2- 3.50 at which point I had to leave in a hurry so I could get to target at Macquarie to try to find my bloody cardy ..
• lost my car *again* as I walked to the wrong part of the carpark because I'd had to park elsewheres ...
• finally on the road, heading the right way this time, I think I ran a red light at broadway ... all the other cars had stopped ... Hmmmm....
• decided to take the bridge and new exciting tunnel, managed to get out before the M2 started (At which point I foolishly thought I'd made it through the day) - got to Mac in plenty of time ..
• and went to target. They didn't have the cardy in either the good size or the slightly too big size. Asked the ladies at the exchange counter to ring around for me, no it's not at Parra or Carlingford, so as far as I'm concerned it's nowhere and I don't even have the too-big one, all I have is a bloody credit note.
• Finally got home (didn't lose my car this time) through stupid "leaving north ryde heading west" traffic at which point it surely *had* to be over ...
• posted the monster laptop sleeve story and then today I heard that the image didn't post properly from picasa and so had to fix it tonight!

I'm so glad that next week due to a religious observance, there is no Monday.

I read the news today, oh boy ...
about a lucky man who made the grade
and though the news was about spam
Well I just had to gasp
I really could not grasp ...
John Howard's had a heart attack
He didn't know it but his use has changed
A crowd of newbies got trojans
We'd seen his face before
Nobody is really sure if Norton filters out pollies....*

If you're wondering what that cryptic message is about, well apparently there is a spam floating round in this electioneering year saying that PM John Howard has had a heart attack, and has a link to The Australian's website. Unfortunately for the n00bs out there, the link is actually not to The Australian but to a 404 not found page which attempts to look like the Aust's website, but is in fact a bad place which downloads a trojan to your machine. This then attempts to steal all your money. Kind of like the government, really.

What got me going about this though was the comment in the SMH coverage, "Political and religious emails are not subject to the scrutiny of the Spam Act" ... so ... we can't even complain about emails that we don't want and won't read and that clutter our inboxes if they appear to contain political or religious matters. I can see it now ...

Subject: Jesus saves...
Message: all the money that we Nigerians can send him. Give us your bank details and your Bible bar code so we can spread the largesse.

Subject: John Howard for your PM..
Message: You need a personal masseur don't you, well our hosts are well trained and all named after prominent political figures.

Sheesh.

*apologies to the Beatles ...

I was in the supermarket the other day, falling into a mild stupor over the choice of fruit juice (Should I get breakfast juice with A,C and E, or instead the one with Iron and Folate? Should I stick to Orange, or get Multi Carrot Berry Blend Plus+++ ?) Ok, so I might have been making those up, and even after I made my choice (because it was 2 bottles for $6 and that's 4.8L of juice so it works out to about 18 cents per glass, which is pretty darn cheap), I was shaking my head at myself for getting stuck on the Added Vitamins. I'm referring of course to the fact that there is no discernible nutritional or medical benefit in Added Vitamins in juice, because there just isn't a therapeutic dosage in there, and if you're really after those Added Vitamins you should either go and eat fruit/vege/meat/etc original source, or if you're lazy just buy some tablets.

Be that as it may, the stupor induced by the juice was nowhere near the stupor I fell into when considering the breakfast cereals. I had one item on my list - "boy cereal" which as we all know means cereal made of small boys. The stupor wasn't induced by the choice of cereals (I knew which one I wanted!) but by the conversation I overheard between Kylie** and Pammy** back at the juice.

"Can Tuscany have apple juice or is it just orange juice she reacts to?"

Tuscany?

TUSCANY?

While I accept that maybe I'm just being a change-hating misanthrope, and that we often name places after people, I find the practice of naming people after places to be absurd.

Sorry. Tuscany? What's the child's nickname going to be? Annie? Or maybe if she has buck teeth she will be just "Tusk". Maybe when she's old enough she'll ask to be called by her middle name, "Helsinki".

Goodness me.

**I don't think these were their real names, but they could have been!

The other night, $1.2million was the winning bid at an auction for a Victoria Cross and assorted other medals of an Aussie soldier killed in WWI. Or was he a kiwi. Anyway, a big deal is being made of this record amount being paid. And a bigger deal is being made of the anonymous patron who is going to generously loan the medals to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra for permanent display.

What I want to know is, who was the previous owner. The person who put the medals *up* for auction. They get $1.2million and they laugh all the way to the bank. Wouldn't it have been better all round if they'd loaned the medals to the War Memorial in the first place?

Then the mysterious War Memorial patron could spend his $1.2million (or perhaps a wee bit more) to upgrade Caves House and preserve some 340-million-year-old Australian heritage instead of this paltry 90-odd year stuff.

Seriously though folks, if you're looking for somewhere to spend your $1.2million you can't go past this place. It's not a shopping blog, and frankly, it's shall-I-say awesome. D™ reckons he can hear my voice when he goes there, either because they write in a style not dissimilar to my own, or because I'm usually talking to him while he's surfing.

Hmmm.

edit: I posted this using writely and it garbled my $ symbols into a very long weird looking string of characters. Remind me again to stop using beta software.