As I was saying…..
There are some past articles that I’ve not really closed off. I really should! 
Each heading below links to the appropriate original article.
This was finally satisfactorily resolved. YAY! The electricity company removed the default after receiving the letter from the Red Cross outlining the events of 2010 and DIAC reimbursed most, but not all, of the $208. A good result!
Unfortunately, this has not been resolved quite as satisfactorily. In fact, it has not been resolved AT ALL. The offending website still has my work up there. I have reported the problem again – that makes five times now. I don’t expect a quick remedy any time soon. I wouldn’t be quite so offended if the original was not a very, very serious article that has been used to advertise travel. Clearly the thief never actually read the content, they just grabbed the text.
We are seeing some action. I’ve had lengthy discussions with English Co-ordinators and we have various people working towards finding some solutions to things like applying for special consideration for Miss 18 given the short time she has had available to her in our education system. This is ongoing for each child, but we are making progress.
Writing a memoir when memories are fresh
Love versus Goliath
Memoirs are usually of a time in one’s life that was long ago. A period of childhood, perhaps, or a time migrating to a new land ten or twenty years ago.
Love versus Goliath is a different kind of memoir. Recent. I am not the only person mentioned in this memoir, in fact in many ways I am not even the central character. How do the rest of my family feel about all this?
Each of my family have different reactions and I’m not sure all of them even know how they feel, really.
Mr O Jnr 2 thinks it is “sick”! He has probably been the most “into” it right from the start. He was keen to be in the media photos, the others were not so keen. He wants to be an actor (engineering seems to have lost favour as the career of choice); I think he believes any publicity is good publicity for his future portfolio! He is also the one who comes home and tells me the newspaper articles are on the noticeboard at school.
Mr O Jnr 1 is more involved in his part-time job, his budding football career and his studies. He doesn’t say much at all. Besides, he is 15. As any parent of teenagers knows, that says it all!
Miss O 2 just wants the book to sell “lots and lots” so she can have a mini-iPad for her birthday. She does tell me her teacher has read it. Or one of the teachers has read it. I’m not sure who specifically, Miss O 2 is not into the finer details of such things when there is television calling!
Miss O 1 has read some parts, but avoided any publicity shot opportunities. When she saw the actual book I think it finally became real for her and she said it is “really cool, Mum”. 
I guess for the kids it could be embarrassing. I hope not and I haven’t received any negative feedback. Before I published I made the schools aware, as a precautionary measure.
My accounting epic fail
I am an accountant. Many years spent going to night school after work two days a week. Worked damn hard to get that piece of paper!
Having blithely offered paperbacks to people, I needed to send buyers invoices, didn’t I? So they can pay me – always a good idea, getting paid! 
I had issued an invoice when I did the migration agent Continuing Professional Development talks so I just opened that and over-typed, as you do!
Football Boots
Do not ask me WHY I thought of it while I was buying Mr O Jnr 1 new football boots this morning, I have no idea, but suddenly I thought, “OH BUGGER!!! I don’t remember putting an invoice number of anything.” 
Came home – no, not an invoice number in sight. Not only that, there wasn’t an invoice date either. It is not like I don’t know the Australia Tax Office regulations for a Tax Invoice (including the fact it must have the words “Tax Invoice” on it), I do! So how on earth did I manage to issue a heap of invoices without a darn invoice number and a date?
There went MY Saturday afternoon – re-issuing invoices!
Marking that one down as a lesson learned as well! But at least I now have a proper invoice issuing system in place, so it was all good! I think!
Still wondering how I did that……
If you want an invoice, with a number and a date, you have to order a book and you can do so by going to the bottom of the previous article!
The defector to AFL
This weekend Mr O Jnr 1 committed THE cardinal sin! He played his first official game of Australian Rules Football instead of playing the game that Mr O says is “in his blood”, soccer. Kids want to try new things, so it is only natural that Mr O Jnr 1 would want to try out the local sport! Mr O did make an effort to understand the scoring and asked questions about frees and penalties, so he is learning…. Mr O tells the story of when he was first in detention here another detainee said “Come and watch the football” so he naturally assumed soccer. He couldn’t understand what on earth the game on the TV was at all!
Before the Game
Your strange questions answered
English: Motherboard of Toshiba HD-A1 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Questions being the search terms used to find this site. Many of the search terms are questions relating to Form 888: as that form has its very own page, I am not answering any of those here!
There are other questions that regularly pop up.
what is motherhood in the computer
No, no, no. Look I know I wrote about motherhood and a computer in an article, but really what you are looking for is MOTHERBOARD, not motherhood.
While it would be great to delegate motherhood duties to the motherboard, it doesn’t quite work that way.
To the right is a motherboard.
Motherhood is more like being knee-deep in dirty laundry and deciding what to cook for dinner. Completely unrelated.
Did someone mention education funding?
September 2011
First up a warning: I am writing this as a mother. I am not a teacher, I am not trained in any aspects of the education department or system. I am a mother. I am also not criticising the schools the kids go to. They are great schools and are doing the best they can working within the system, policies, procedures and processes they have to work within.
I am a mother of four children who entered our public education system at various stages: years 3, 5, 8 and 10.
When the children arrived, we had the older ones tested to see if their English was of a suitable standard to allow them entry into mainstream schools. They were allowed entry into mainstream schools.
The younger two were not required to be tested, I gather the concept is that immersed in the local system, their English would rapidly improve.
We’ve been through various issues. Did Mr Year 8 have a hearing problem? About $200 later, no, he didn’t, he just needed extra help with English. This isn’t easily available, though. Outside school, he was too young for any of the government programs for migrants. This is the young man that put his head down and bum up and got himself into Maths A, so he isn’t dumb!
We had gone through the situation very carefully with both the schools. Yes, the children had attended school primarily in English, but it wasn’t the best English in the world. They needed to UNlearn then RElearn – makes life hard. One of the co-ordinators has recently told me students from Hong Kong have the same problem.
We discovered Miss Year 10 wasn’t allowed to do ESL as her English subject for Year 12 because officially she comes from an English speaking country. No, no, no. Miss Year 10 comes from a country where the official language is English, that is not nearly the same as an English speaking country. No provision for testing of language skills. Just treated the same as a kid from the USA or the UK.
Greetings of the Season!
Greetings of the season to all who celebrate this time of year. Christmas comes but once a year. Just as well really, as it is enough to drive people crazy! Apart from the kids and Dad not being able to agree whether or not Muslims celebrate Christmas in Nigeria (Dad says no, kids say yes), we had a fairly laid back day and went to the movies in the afternoon.
We bought the Extreme bucket of popcorn and that seemed to last at least until just after the advertisements and trailers. Parental Guidance was actually quite a funny movie and we’d recommend it for anyone wanting a family movie over the holidays. The adults appreciated the adult aspects and the kids laughed at the kids, so everyone was entertained. Billy Crystal has aged since I last saw him. I suppose we all have.
As we drove to the movies, Melbourne looked like a ghost town. You could count the cars on the road on the fingers of one hand. I don’t think I have ever seen it quite as quiet as it was yesterday.
This morning Mr O did gardening type stuff, planting all the seedlings we bought to grow capsicums, carrots, tomatoes and silver-beet. We’ll see how these grow!! While I am a farmer’s daughter and we always grew our own vegetables, that was a long, long time ago! Mr O’s apprenticeship is more about growing flowers and trees than vegetables!
Seedlings
