My brother is going to turn into a danish and my sister is going to turn into a frozen bubble.

Wednesday I decided to come down to Canberra. I went to Dick Smith’s to get iPods for Tristan and Lara. I pointed at the merchandise and said “I will have a blue one and a green one” and the salesman responded “is that for different moods or different people?”

Thursday I did the rest of my Christmas shopping, including getting a gift for Secret Santa ritual at work. Usually stuff in Australia closes at 5 or 5:30pm, but Thursday before Christmas everything is open till midnight practically, if not in actuality. It was a mad rush! Friday we had Christmas lunch at work. The food was really nice and we had Christmas crackers and everything. Then everyone drew numbers and picked gifts and/or stole gifts from others. I never want to steal other people’s gifts because it seems rude somehow (I realize it is just a game meant for fun of course), but it is always entertaining to watch other people steal gifts. My gift was the last one to get unwrapped. Can I just mention here how awesome my new coworkers are and my new work environment is?

Friday I flew down to Canberra. The airport was surprisingly uncrowded for this time of year. The aeroplane was mostly empty. When I got to Canberra, Tristan had his earphones on listening to music, and I thoughts to myself, I definitely got him the right gift. Lara was excited about her iPod too, although I think she was more excited about the games and the possibility of putting music on it. Dad already has the DVD I got him, which was unfortunate.

brothers and sisters

Today I realized that I decided to take the week of ANZAC day off. That means that I am taking a day off that I was already getting off! Oops! Part of the time I will be spending in... Canberra. So exciting (not). I want to spend more time with my siblings though. This makes up for it.

I was having this conversation with Tristan the last time I was there, and he used my own dogma and bias against me. It was pretty awesome. I was so proud of him for thinking critically and not just regurgitating what other people say. I would like to have more moments like that. I can’t believe he is going to be 14 this year. I can still distinctly remember when he was a newborn. I was a lot younger then too.

the write [sic] and wrong of it

Nobody is ever on AIM anymore. I mean, they are sort of on, in that their computers are connected to the network, but they aren’t on in that they are actually asleep. It must have something to be on the wrong side of the planet. Just like most of them also drive on the wrong side of the road. And yes, by “them” I mean the giant ants. Why is it that they seem to come up so often?

Tonight I had dinner with some long lost relatives. Actually not really; I hadn't seen them in about a year and a half. I see family on my dad's side (aside from Dad, his wife and the kids) so seldom that when I do see them it feels as though they are long and lost. I’ve never lived so close to so much family. It’s nice.

Also: my dad bought a new car. It was about time that old clunker was way too small for the size of the family. It’s so weird to think of my dad driving a car with those modern curves. I instinctively think of his car as being a boxlike refugee from the 1980s. Apparently Lara misses the old car. Reminded me of how heart broken I was when my mum sold the Tercel. That was years ago.

It was actually even pretty nice to talk to my step mother tonight. She treated me like shit when she first started dating my dad (that was years ago), but I’ve tried not to hold a grudge against her, as I think that would just hurt my dad, and solve nothing.

She is ethnically Chinese, so I got to ask her intelligent questions about which dialect of Chinese that her family spoke (she is herself essentially a native English speaker), and where her family originates from. Before I started studying Chinese input methods I was aware that there were many subtle regional differences in Chinese languages and culture, but totally ignorant about what they might be. I’m still pretty ignorant, but at least I am learning. I tried to get them to show me Tristan and Lara’s middle names, which are Chinese, and so have Chinese characters that correctly represent them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my laptop out of simplified Chinese mode, and my step mother only recognizes the traditional variants.

I’m pretty sure that “David”^[1] is a jerk. He came by tell me that I was working on the wrong thing today and that the resolution on my monitor reminded me of the cruddy old days when X Windows was all the rage. Hello, if you didn’t give me shit to work on then the shit that I work on wouldn’t look like shit. Blah, whatever. Either it will get better, or I’ll be gone soon. I don’t much care which.

1. guy at work who offered me the position that no longer exists