Just a quick note to let you know why posting has been a little light over recent days.
After considerable thought over recent weeks our family is looking to make some significant changes.
With my workplace about to move, Emily getting ready for High School next year, the ever changing needs of a growing family, and a number of other considerations, we’ve decided to test the market and look at the possibility of moving house. We’re currently in the process of trying to get our home ready for sale.
We’re starting to sort through the huge mass of belongings we’ve accumulated over the years to decide what to pack, throw or stow. We’re also looking at carrying out a number of home maintenance jobs, some gardening and repairs to the brick paving on our wonky driveway. (Any offers of help would be cheerfully accepted! )
We still haven’t settled on the exact area we’ll move to but we have a few ideas and feel confident that we can find something suitable within our price range.
Our current home has served us so very well for the last 15 years but it really feels like it’s time to move on.
I guess Fathers Day is always going to be more of a celebration when you have two exceptional children like Emily and James.
We had a wonderful time yesterday. The day started with some hugs and just the right balance of cute, yummy and practical gifts.
Church was great with Youth Pastor and good friend Andrew Binns preaching a wonderful Fathers Day sermon, his first as a dad. It was a wonderful reminder of the absolute privilege and the very serious responsibility of being a dad.
After that we headed off to Subiaco for a picnic and one of the free Sunday at Subi performances. Improvilicious is a magnificent family show based on clever and funny improvised theatre. We saw a snippet of the show about a year ago and some weeks back we went to see the show in full. Yesterday was our opportunity to share it with extended family. While the basic structure remains the same, the very nature of improv ensures that it’s never the same twice so there were plenty of new laughs.
I’m hoping that we’ll head back to Subi in a couple of weeks to see my favourite local band, Adam Hall and the Velvet Playboys for their Sunday at Subi performance.
Fathers Day is celebrated at different times depending on where in the world you live but for those who celebrated yesterday I hope it was a good day for you.
Back in 2000, at the age of 18, Vanessa Amorosi became the first Australian female to reach the number 1 spot on the National ARIA chart with a debut album. Back then, absolutely everybody was listening to The Power.
With such an amazing start to her recording career you’d think that we would have seen several follow up albums over the past few years but it wasn’t until May of this year that Vanessa, now 27, released her second album, Somewhere in the Real World.
It certainly hasn’t disappointed. The music showcases her incredible talents and has given us such great songs as Perfect and The Simple Things.
On her website she wrote about the delay between albums.
Through the quiet time – when people must have thought I’d run away and joined the circus – I was doing a lot of production. I love walking into studios. I’ve always been fascinated by the sound and the feel that comes from different technologies. I was fixated on creating the feel records used to have, creating an energy in recording with modern technology, as well as being a singer and songwriter. I was so into it I actually went around every studio in Melbourne and said “Can I just sit here and watch you do your job?”
I spent a good four years doing that and then I started writing for other people. I’m constantly writing songs. I have a catalogue of thousands of songs sitting on my hard-drive. People were asking if I would like to write for other artists, so I started doing writing sessions.
I got to a point, after all that, after doing all that work and doing a lot of studio stuff, where I realised I really missed singing on a stage.
I was singing for hours in the studio, but that’s nothing compared to singing live in front of people. That thirst, that hunger for wanting a crowd and winning them over started to come back. I decided I wasn’t ready yet to put the microphone down.
I started seeking out people who could inspire me, people who could push me to a level that I hadn’t previously been pushed, to give me something to fight for. That’s when I met my manager Ralph Carr, who’s just as feisty and passionate about it as I am. I don’t want a manager who agrees with me. I want someone who challenges me and has different opinions. I said to him,I want to write this new album and I want to be frightened about doing it.
We’ve got great songwriters in Australia and great studios and people I love working with but I’d been working in those studios for the last four years so we decided to work on the new album in America.
I wanted to work with people who didn’t know me, who had no previous expectations, who wouldn’t look at me twice. I was more interested in them, to work with them, to make them want me, and I would do the rest.
I spoke to Vanessa during my morning radio programme on 98.5 Sonshine FM today. You can hear what she had to say by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.
What kind of God would insist on a woman staying in a relationship with an abusive husband? Some Christians believe that divorce is totally unacceptable under any circumstance but is that really the case?
There are very few people who enter marriage with anything but the best of intentions and a strong desire to make a life long committment, but for those wanting to stay within God’s plan, what happens when people find themselves in a destructive relationship?
Under what circumstances does the Bible permit divorce?
Does the Bible allow for a divorced Christian to remarry?
Divorce and remarriage remains a hot topic in Christian circles with a wide variety of opinions on the subject.
Barbara Roberts has written a book titled Not Under Bondage - Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery and Desertion. I recently spoke to her about her book and her journey to recovery.
You can hear what she has to say by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.
I was reading this morning that A 25 year old woman was taken to hospital after being mugged by a monkey for a box of egg tarts at a bus stop in Hong Kong.
The story at The Earth Times says the monkey made its move just after the woman got off a bus for a Sunday picnic. It scratched her arm as it grabbed the box of egg tarts. The shocked woman was taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries.
Apparently Hong Kong’s rural New Territories are home to thousands of monkeys. They usually keep clear of humans, but occasionally, hungry lone males will prey on hikers from the city unused to seeing monkeys and arriving in country parks with bags of food.
It reminds me of an experience in India a few years back.
It was 2005 and while in India we visited the mountain city of Shimla. To get to the main centre of Shimla we needed to park the vehicles that had driven us up the mountain and then take a couple of elevators up to the main part of town.
When we got out of the second lift and entered the road that led to the shopping area, I noticed a number of monkeys climbing over the top of a building. We had seen dozens of monkeys by the side of the road on the way up but now was my opportunity to take a photo or two.
I spied a mother monkey carrying her baby and thought it’d make a cute picture. I was standing several metres away aiming my camera when the mother monkey saw me and made a nasty hissing sound before heading my way.
Before I knew it I had a monkey grabbing at my leg. They can certainly move fast but once that kind of adrenaline kicks in I can move pretty fast too. I took off very quickly and avoided any permanent damage.
You really haven’t lived until you’ve been attacked by a monkey.
Author Mem Fox has opened up a controversial debate by claiming that childcare for very young children is child abuse.
According to this article at News.com.au, Mem believes that society will look back on the trend of allowing babies only a few weeks old to be put into childcare and wonder, “How could we have allowed that child abuse to happen?”.
“I just tremble,” she said. “I don’t know why some people have children at all if they know that they can only take a few weeks off work.
“I know you want a child, and you have every right to want a child, but does the child want you if you are going to put it in childcare at six weeks?
“I don’t think the child wants you, to tell the honest truth. I know that’s incredibly controversial.”
It’s a topic that we often choose not to talk about because no one likes to be criticised for the way they bring up their children.
I must admit that I get concerned with the age at which some children are handed over to others for care. I also wonder if career is so important to some people, why they choose to bring children into the equation.
There are always circumstances that will mean that a child will need care from those other than parents at a young age but the care of the very young in childcare centre is becoming a big industry. Parents are planning to have children and then be back at work within weeks.
Whichever side you’re on in the debate, I think it’s a good thing to be discussing. We need to decide if this is the way we want our society to go. Is Mem right? If we haven’t got the time to put into bringing up our kids should we really be having them?
She said a Queensland childcare worker had told her earlier this year: “We’re going to look back on this time from the late ’90s onwards - with putting children in childcare so early in their first year of life for such long hours - and wonder how we have allowed that child abuse to happen”.
“It’s just awful. It’s awful for the mothers as well. It’s completely heartbreaking,” Fox said. “You actually have to say to yourself, ‘If I have to work this hard and if I’m never going to see my kid and if they are going to have a tremendous stress in childcare, should I be doing it?’
“Babies have much higher levels of stress in childcare.”
September 8, 2008 
)
Posted by Rodney Olsen in Life 
No Comments » 
Back in 2000, at the age of 18, Vanessa Amorosi became the first Australian female to reach the number 1 spot on the National ARIA chart with a debut album. Back then, absolutely everybody was listening to The Power.
What kind of God would insist on a woman staying in a relationship with an abusive husband? Some Christians believe that divorce is totally unacceptable under any circumstance but is that really the case?
content rss
Recent Comments