The joys of coming home

This is the photo of an Australian citizen. I thought that when I came home to Australia, that setting myself back up in the country of my birth (and where I have lived for the majority of my life), would be a relatively easy thing to do.

How wrong I am.

The healthcare system in Australia is a subsidised affair called Medicare. Every citizen is entitled to Medicare. However, if you're a returning citizen there are certain criteria you need to meet to be able to apply. Firstly, they want proof that you are permanently back in Australia - which, effectively I am for the immediate future. So, they want proof of bill of sale of your house in the country you've left or proof that you've closed your foreign bank accounts. Or, they want a rental agreement/bill of purchase on a house in Australia or utility bills or an Australian bank account. Since I have not sold my UK house, closed my bank account, rented/bought a house in Australia, I don't have any of that information. But hey, I have my Australian passport, birth certificate and marriage certificate so if I get the Australian bank account, it should be easy.

Hah!

I applied for an Australian bank account today. No problem. The passport and certificates are enough for me to open the bank account, but they need proof of address in order for me to be able to withdraw from the account. So, the helpful guy at the bank suggested that I apply for an Australian Tax File Number - apparently you can do it online. You can. But not if you're Australian. For some strange reason only known to the Australian Goverment, Australians have to go down to their nearest post office, obtain the correct form, fill it in and post it to the tax office.

The annoying thing about all of this is that the purpose of this is for me to get healthcare while I'm here. If I had come into Australia on my UK passport with a visitor's visa I could have got Medicare assistance without any issue - apply online and everything. Easy. But not if I'm Australian.

Another thing: I've come back to Australia to look after my elderly parents while my father deals with terminal Leukaemia. I cannot work while I'm here because they need my help too much. We've heard about so many people who've obtained help from the government for various things and my family has never needed to ask for help so we're new to this whole system. Because I'm Australian, with a possible exception, I may have to wait until I've been back here two years before I can apply for any allowances. I'm not intending to be here two years, so we'll have to see what happens.

It's just so frustrating to have to go through this: Applying for allowances will be easier if I have Medicare, can't apply for Medicare until I have a bank account. Can't apply for a bank account until I have a Tax Office Number (or ironically, Medicare).

Round and round and round we go...

Goodbye R496 URD

I sold my car today. It has been an integral part of my life for the last 11 years and it seems strange to not have a car, even if this is only going to be for a short while. It is so integral, that I cannot find any photos of it to post here. (but thank you to my friend, Missus Wookie for finding one). It's funny how you use something every day for so long, but when you go back to look, there's no other record of it's existence other than out-of-date paperwork in your filing cabinet.

This car was my first company car when I joined Conchango back in 1998. There were four Golf GTIs ordered for new staff and VW were just about to releast the Mark 4 and didn't have any in stock, so they recalled one from each of four other right-hand drive vehicle countries so that we could have them. I believe mine was the New Zealand version - air con and a sun roof. Someone got the South African one - no sun roof, but air con so good you could have stored your beef next to it. There was also an Australian one - air con, no sun roof - and a Japanese one - air con, no sun roof, a great stereo system as standard.

If all four of us turned up to a company do, there'd be R495 URD, R496 URD, R497 URD and R498 URD all parked next to each other. Mine was the only purple one so I never tried to drive one of the others away by mistake after a company do.

I'll miss the car. It's been good to me. The guy I sold it to said that the clutch was going and the gearbox was making a funny noise. The clutch hasn't changed in 10 years and the gearbox makes the same noise it's always made, so I guess it just proves that Golfs are the reliable cars that every one says they are. Their reputation is intact.

Extreme Papercrafting

I've been spending the long weekend at a science fiction convention - Plokta.con. Lots of silly stuff has been going on but one of the workshops at the beginning of the weekend was "Build a model of Howl's Moving Castle". I had no idea what it was I was getting myself into, but hey, it involved paper, scissors and glue so it couldn't be all that bad, surely.

Well, here it is. We estimate that approximately 10 people have spent an average of 7.5 hours each working on (some, like me, have spent more, some a lot less), and today (Monday) we completed it!

This was a free download from Epson Japan in 2004 when the movie was released. It has since come down off Epson's website and some person with initiative has done a (kind of) English translation for the instructions, and posted it up somewhere else. When I find the URL, I'll post it for you.

It was designed to be printed on standard weight paper in

A4. We printed it in A3 which is 40% bigger and I'm so glad! At A4 size, there are parts of this that are so small, I would go cross-eyed trying to cut it out.

If I had to print it in A4, I'd probably run it through my Silhouette software and get the cutter to cut it out.

It was great fun and having so many people collaborating probably made the whole process easier because when the sketchy English instructions became incomprehensible, we worked out where things were supposed to be by committee.

Dad's album

My sister, Beth, and I have been working on an album for my Dad. He keeps joking that if we don't hurry up, he'll be dead before we finish it. He has no idea how true that is. It's one of those things: just as soon as you think you've finished it, you come up with just one more page to do.

This is our sister, Susan doing her page. She's actually more of a scrapbooker than she thinks she is. She made a scrapbook of one of the trips the orchestra she's in did and I think it is wonderful. This is her doing her page for Dad's album. You can just see me on the other side of the table. We have this set up in the living room at Mum & Dad's place so that we can work on the album and spend time with them. It has actually worked out very well. Everyone who comes to visit gets a chance to see the process and many of them put in their 2 cents worth.

Dad is hale and hearty at the moment. As you can see from this picture, he is looking pretty good. His little brother came over from Canberra and told him "you're a fraud. You're not sick, you're just seeking attention!" (in the kindest possible way).

This is a picture I asked him to pose for last week. The card he is holding in his hand is one of thousands that we have in the garage. From about 1974 to 1994, Dad was the Chief Examiner for the Biology exam for getting into University. In the pre-computer age, he needed an efficient and cheap way to keep track of exam questions. These cards are about 20cm x 10cm and have punched holes around the edge - just large enough for a size 10 knitting needle.

The idea is that each card has the question printed on the front. Then along the top of the card, the first choice option is for which section of the accompanying text the question relates to. There is a choice option for whether the question is Multiple Choice, Short Answer or Essay, then there is a sub-section choice and a section for how the student must answer the question (display Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis or Evaluation), as you want a balance of these.

The idea was, he made his first choice (which section), insert the knitting needle into the first slot, then shake the stack of cards. The ones which fell out where all the questions relating to that section. Then he inserted the knitting needle into the question type (for example, Multiple Choice), shake the stack out and the ones left were the multiple choice. Then insert the knitting needle into the sub-section and shake (you get the idea now) and that gave you possible questions. He'd then insert the knitting needle into, say, the Knowledge slot, shake them out and that would give him all the questions in that Section, that were Multiple Choice, in a particular sub-section that would require the student to demonstrate Knowledge. It was actually quiet an ingenious system. He never translated it to computer, because the time that it would have taken to write such a database and then enter in all the data would have simply taken too long.

But by going through this process year, he could turn up to a paper-setting meeting with possible questions already determined. He could also keep track of which years the questions went into to make sure that they weren't repeated too often (as current students get past papers to practice on) and later on, he also recorded other data about how well the question had performed which would allow him to modify or replace bad questions.

Really quite clever when you think about it.

Another bunch of lovely people

My sister-in-law, Meredith, has been an avid stamper since before I left Australia in 1991. Last week, she asked me to do a demonstration/mini-workshop for some of her friends which I was happy to oblige.

I showed them a bunch of techniques they can do with Distress Inks and other products from Ranger. I got them to do three of the tag techniques and then we did a mini project where they took an ATC-sized canvas which comes with it's own mini-easel and they decorated using Adirondack Dimensional Pearls.

This week, Meredith invited me to join her little stamping group where Lucy was showing them this fabulous card. It uses one sheet of A4 or 8.5x11. Her card has only two pockets, but with a little modification on my part I got three pockets and I could've put in a fourth if I'd wanted it. This photo doesn't do it justice. We used Distress Inks and a little Perfect Pearls to give the labels a little bit of shimmer.

All craft products seem a little expensive over here (I guess if you have to ship it halfway around the world...), so I understand why they haven't been able to invest in some of the stuff I have.

These lovely people are two of the staff at a fantastic store here in Perth called Scraptivate - this is Mel (on the left) and Megan (on the right). This store has got some of the most amazing stuff and talented people working there, presenting Scrapbooking in an artistic way.

They have two Australian-made products that are great: The Collections range is pre-cut chipboard shapes and there's just been some new releases hit the store after the Australian equivalent of CHA. They also have some amazing German Scrap - black angel wings! - all exclusive

to Scraptivate.

My sister, Beth took me down there the Sunday after I arrived. That it took 6 days to get into this store is a dissapointment I'm not sure I'm ever going to live down. UK Stores would kill for this much space to spread out in. One whole length of the store is full of paper racks and she's got everything from the popular US manufacturers, plus some stuff I've never seen from Australian manufacturers. I'm working on her to get Scrapperdashery, but if you'd like her to get the Poetry range, please go in and tell her. I can't put up photos of all the amazing artwork that was dotted around the shop as there simply isn't space, but check out the amazing houses and things on this table.

I'm learning to let go

Spending all my waking hours with Dad is suffocating him - he says he doesn't want people to sit around and watch him die, which we're not - so I've been finding things to do and music has always been a great escape for me.

Two of my sisters sing with the University of Western Australia Choral Society (UWACS) and they are currently rehearsing the Mass in B Minor by Bach (lots of notes), so I trailed along to rehearsal with them last Wednesday night. Last night, we went to see the Perth equivalent of The Sixteen perform it. The group is only 18 members strong, but they are all professional singers. The choir was fantastic. The Alto and Soprano were okay (enunciation is a good thing, people!). The orchestra was reasonable but they were mostly students from what we could gather (there is no listing in the programme) and they were using early music instruments and to quote my sister Susan "Bach is the reason more modern instruments were invented"

It was performed at St George's Cathedral which is gothic-style but made out of brick, not stone as the only local stone is Limestone and I'm not sure it would be strong enough to hold up that style of structure.

But it was warm. I'm determined to not be like a Wingeing Pom and complain about the heat, but even some of the locals were leaving because it was too hot. Yesterday's daytime temperature was 37 Celcius (98.6 Farenheit) and the Fremantle Doctor was late arriving (about 3am) so the evening was warm. I had taken a light jumper with me just in case the clear skies heralded a cooler night. I needn't have bothered.

It's great to be home

I'm at home in Perth now and it is great to be here seeing the family. Zandy is with me and will stay for three of the four weeks that I'm here. My brothers are both flying in from their homes in Tasmania and Northern Territory in another week and we're having a celebration for Dad on Easter Saturday.

We've spent a lot of time just sitting chatting so far. Dad is being prompted by many people to talk about his life and things that he has done, so I'm learning new things about what he did. It's giving me an opportunity to clarify some of the stories I've heard over the years and get the story straight. We all thought that there would be plenty of time for this - even he did - so we're now cramming it all in.

Yesterday, an old work colleague dropped around and we got the whole chronological timeline of his working career. It was great because Frank would say "Graham, do you remember such-and-such and the time they did that?" and Dad would respond and we'd get the whole story with clarity of detail that was surprising since some of these things happened 35 years ago. He says it's because he forgets these things until someone prompts the memory and then it just pops into his head as though it were yesterday.

The tubes you can see in his neck are connections that allow the hospital to take blood when they need to without having to puncture more holes in his arm. He says that the arm connections were stinging, so by going straight into the neck, it is much easier. His blood count is down so they'll give him more reds next week, but his platelets are up to 101 (apparently something around 150 is normal and they don't give platelets until they are down to 10) but we're keeping an eye on him. If he starts to feel woozy then that is an indication that his reds are down and we need to get him to Emergency so they can give him a transfusion.

Now that I've seen him in person and spent time with him a lot over the last four days, I'm prepared to let go and see other people. So, I'm spending time with my sisters singing today and going to a performance of Bach's B Minor Mass tonight.

Life is okay.

A break in service for a little while

Just to let you all know, things are going to be a little interrupted for a while. I'm going home to Australia to see Dad. I'll be gone for about a month. I'll only update this blog if there is news to share - one way or the other.

Retailers: If you're planning to place an order with Scrapperdashery, I can still fulfill orders from elsewhere in the world. The only two things I can't fulfil are non-stick craft sheet sold by the metre because I have to be here to fulfil a special order like this, and solid-coloured cardstock as my distribution agent doesn't have any in stock at the moment. But all the patterned paper is still there and there are discounts applying until the end of March.

I know you'll be thinking of me and supporting me through this, so thanks in advance for that support.

Judi