January 2010

On the 4th of January I was married to the lovely Carina for 18 years. Everyone agrees she deserves a gold medal! At one stage these celebrations were very elaborate and we always had a fancy dinner somewhere with us swapping the selection and bookings every year. We have become complacent but we had a nice lunch at BonJourno’s with Michael. I did try to book at Ned Kelly’s but they were closed for January to relax after the Xmas season!

It was back to school for Michael and he will be with his first male teacher this year. It started off quite nicely and he seems pretty keen although he “hates school”. For me it was also back to work. These days it consists of sitting around, surfing the web and counting the minutes till it’s time to go home. The parent company in Canada took a beating end of last year and we are suffering in “sympathy” with the dip in airline business.

I have to get my Ozzie drivers license by February. I did the learners test and failed the same question twice in one day. Here you have to get all the “give way” questions 100% correct before moving to multiple choice questions. There are many intersections in the suburbs that are not controlled by any traffic regulations like GiveWay or Stop signs and you have to know the rules about who gives way for the system to work.

I have managed to get a bit more active and cycle to work en hope to start swimming in the mornings shortly. The swimming is quite expensive but should give quick reslults in burning some of the excess padding around the waist.

Carina is still very unhappy with her work and will possibly stop with the course after her evaluation in a few weeks. There seems to be a lot of unhappy workers at this one specific institution. It will be a bit sad that she’s put in so much for so long and walk away with nothing so she may transfer to another location to complete her appreniceship.

January has been a really good month on FaceBook. It felt like someone put out the following challenge:”find Hansie”. I have made contact with several people that I last saw in Burgersdorp Laerskool in 1971, some from Potch Technical High and some colleages that worked with me a few years ago. One guy is even here in Oz. I don’t particularly like FB but it is really good to hear news from the folks back home.