Some more things that have caught my attention

Ok so here are a few random things that have caught my attention lately and I thought I would let you all know about them.

1. Jez and Kris Smith.
and by these two I mean the photographer and Australia's Next Top Model judge and Dannii Minogue's partner and Football Superstar host. Anyone else think that they're related?
I'm a little devastated because for once Wikipedia let me down.
Jez barely has a profile which has about 4 lines on it all about ANTM which I'm sure is great for the show but like I care about what portraits he's taken.
And Kris doesn't have one at all which surprises me because of his rather high social profile here in Australia, and let's not forget that he is a former rugby league star in the UK. Whatever, I'll figure it out somehow, I just wanted to know but if I can't...

2. Gold Coast bashing.
Now I like to partake in quite a bit of this myself every now and then but I think i'm allowed to coz I was born here and I actually live here and I don't just see it from the outside.
I've noticed that Gold Coast bashing is on the increase and I have to say that i don't think it's cool.
Yes I know that as a tourist town, and it is a town despite what people may say and think, that naturally we have a daggy label, but we're not country. God we have Prada and Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Burberry and Tiffany here so we can't be too bad.
I don't even think that what we're being portrayed as, ie country bumpkins and bogans, is even representative. Ok, bogans in Nerang and Palm Beach but not anywhere else. If anything we're more surfie drop out kind of.
And yes I know there is a tacky, wear all labels all day everyday tendency in the more "upmarket" suburbs but I think that's more from being a wanker rather than any thought of actually thinking it's fashionable.

3. Winter or lackthereof
Is anyone else noticing the distinct lack of winter that is going on around here lately? Or not even lately, just in general?
Now I know I spent last winter in Melbourne where it was quite on the cold side but seriously this is getting out of control, I haven't even really had to wear a jumper during the day when i go out, it's ridiculous. I think I can safely say I've been genuinely freezing 2 days this winter and they were when I was in Melbourne, ok so they don't really count but point made yeah?
And what's with the heat these past 2 days? 26, 25 degrees? This is not winter by any stretch of the imagination...
Oh and as for all those people i see walking around the shopping centres with scraves on, it's not even cold enough for a jumper let alone a scarf, yes I know they look cool, but on the Gold Coast you don't look cool, you look like an idiot and everyone is laughing at you...

4. Term deposit rates.
Can I say that as someone who doesn't owe any money to the banks, I really look forward to interest rate rises in the vain hope that the banks might lift their savings interest rates as well as their borrowing interest rates. Alas I hope in vain.
So i put some money on a term deposit in February, in that time we've had a few interest rate rises. The rate was i think 6.5% or something like that.
You want to know what you can get now for a term deposit of a simillar length, like 6.2, 6.3%.
Now if my maths is correct, and it is, if the interest rates are going up then shouldn't that rate also be going up, not down as is the case.
I think it's a disgrace to the banking industry that I can get more interest on a no-fee savings account with Virgin Money than I can through a long established bank on a term deposit where the money is theres for say 6 months whereas with Virgin it's on call.
So thank you Sir Richard, glad to see the title hasn't made you useless, from the bottom of my bank account I salute you Sir!!

This is why men don't cook here

So having a Kiwi for a father is problematic in many ways, today i'll focus on one and the lead on effects of that...

So Kiwi's like lamb, i say lamb and not sheep with lamb being of course dead sheep, let's keep it clean people... anyway the idiot (that would be my father for those of you who are having trouble keeping up) picked up some lamb shanks on the weekend at Coles because apparently they looked lonely.
Now I do all of the cooking around here, remenants of when I was young and stupid and fell into the job, but one of the few things that i do not cook is roast, of any kind, i hate it, it's slow it's boring but requires a lot of attention.
So upon spying afore mentioned lamb shanks in the trolley i steadfastly refused to cook them.
Now the idiot has wednesday's off so it was suggested he could cook them then because most likely myself, and my mother would be working and since he would be doing nothing and never cooks he could cook. Lately he has taken to criticising my cooking so personally i like this idea after never really being nominated to do the cooking and having come back from Melbourne and stepped back into the role.
Continuing on he had spied a recipie for lamb shanks in the paper a couple of weeks ago which he wanted to cook today, but did he get the recipie out of the paper? No, I did it for him. Does he know where said recipie is? No, did he look for it? No.
So at Coles they have slow cookers on special, $49 for a sunbeam which i think is quite good, and as a daughter of someone who likes slow cooked food i thought it would be mighty nice of me to buy idiot features one so he could cook his lamb shanks and various other casseroles in it. Yes i know I am a credit to daughter's everywhere.
I also bought a lamb shank recipie mix in case (as i had every thought was the case) he neglected to look for his lamb shank recipie and therefore had no idea what was needed.
Now he was going out this morning for a doctors appointment, at 10, he knew we like to have dinner at say 7ish because i have to get to work at 8 and if he had bothered to check the recipie mix he would see that it requires 8 hours cooking. So did he start dinner before he went to the doctors? Of course not.
Naturally he gets home and asks me what is required even though he knows that I am in no way responisble for this meal.
Now he knows that it is a slow cooker meal, that generally means it takes a long time to cook, usually with slow cookers people put them on in the morning before they go to work so they're ready when they get home, apparently my father is not one of the many people who know this.
Regardless he begins to cook and starts to brown the shanks even though it's not neccessary but only creates more dishes which he will not deal with. I point this out to him and am told that he knows because he can read.
He then asks if the shanks need to be seasoned and i tell him that since he just pointed out to me that he can read surely he should know... apparently that didn't go down too well since i was then unceremoniously thrown out of the kitchen...
But it is for this very reason, that he gets all snooky, that he doesn't cook more and that i do it simply to keep the peace.
Oh Lord let dinner time come quickly and end painlessly...

Masterchef

Just thought I'd let you all know that I'm now a masterchef.
Yep that's right I finally managed to perfect my macarons, ok so they may not look like they come from Laurent in South Yarra, but they taste like it which i think is more to the point.
They're really not that difficult as long as you know what u're doing which isn't more than sift, whisk, mix, pipe, sit and bake.
Ok so the piping may not be as easy as everyone thinks it is but i'm sure it will get better.
I might even decide to experiment one of these days haha...

Federal Election

God I hate elections, the ads especially, honestly is there anything worse than cheesy music and stupid slogans? Enough with the moving forward Julia, we don't care and your voice is seriously grating, those poor press gallery journos who have to listen to all your speeches. They reckon listening to your ipod will damage your hearing, i reckon she's just as bad, if not worse.
Anyway so only like 5 weeks to go until the stupid ads go away and our news and newspapers return to normal, if only we could fast forward this bit...
Personally if i was a federal party i'm not sure i would want swinging voters, yeah i know a vote is a vote but do you seriously want someone voting for you because they believed your rhetoric and fell for your election promises which will be swept under the carpet in 6 months time once they've got what they want?
Anyway so we got our first piece of election propaganda yesterday, a flier from one of the candidates in our seat.
Being a new seat we don't have a sitting member so of course they could hardly get anything out to us.
But this flier, I'm not going to say which party it was for fear of giving them way too much publicity then they really need, was so dodgy even i could do something better and my group and i wanted to kill off our candidate when we did campaign strategies...
This was a bodgy home made job where the picture wasn't clear at all and was seriously the most boring thing I have ever looked at...
Here's a message, if you want my vote, and seeing as though I've already made up my mind because I'm a 1 party gal, you're going to have to do a lot better than a dodgy home made flier...

Inside Sport

Just a quick note to let you all know that from now all my comments about sport will be found on my new blog http://theviewfrommywindow-insidesport.blogspot.com so do yourself a favour and check it out!!

Body Image and the Septmeber Issue

So I just watched the September Issue, yes a little behind the times I know but whatever...
I found it so interesting the influence Anna Wintour has. Yes I know she's great and yada yada yada but seriously, don't the fashion world know how dangerous giving one person all that power can be? I'd seriously like to see the designer who had the balls to stand up to her coz in all that doco I didn't see it once.
I get why they let her, because they need the press her magazine and her inturn can give them but it just makes me sad to see how the fashion industry works.
FOr those of us, myself included, who love fashion and love the power of the clothes and the ideas they provoke, it makes me sad to think that designers really can't get anywhere if they don't bow to her request.
But as i said i do get it.
What I did like was how she helped Thakoon. Sure i know it's only 1 designer in a sea of designers but it was nice, it also, very powerfully showed her power and influence. "I said you'd get Gap."

Body Image.
The federal government has introduced guidelines about models and retouching in magazines.
Ok well and good, i don't really enjoy seeing walking skeletons paraded in front of me.
However if they are, I'm not stupid enough to see them and think that's what I need to look like. Yes I would like to be skinny but seriously I don't see these models as a danger to my health. I also see those pictures and realise they have been retouched.
I don't know about many people, and maybe because of things I had to go through as a child I was realised early, but no one is perfect. I know they're just words and I actually got to see this in action but i want to know what happened to teaching people common sense? Seriously.
If you're a young girl and see a picture of Miley Cirus or whoever and think that she's like that in real life you're seriously deluded and maybe just a large bit thick.
I don't think these guidelines are going to make 1 bit of difference until parents start stepping up to the plate and teaching their kids common sense, tolerance and self acceptance.

Gay Marriage

I think it's rich that our PM, a single woman who has a male partner, who for all intents and purposes is living in sin, to tell homosexual couples who are so entirely desperate to tell the world they love each other and want to commit to each other for the rest of their lives that they can't.

Why not Julia? You don't believe in God so what's the problem?
And for that matter why aren't you married? YOu've been with your partner for ages what's the hold up?

Take for argument's sake that people may say that marriage is so the couple can then start a family ie it's for procreation. If this is to be accepted then why don't we just ban homosexuality altogether. Seriously it's a slippery slope if you start down that road.

I just find it all so hypocritical that as our PM she herself is living in sin and more than that doesn't even believe in God so i don't see what basis she can give for that reasoning.

If you don't believe in God, then marriage, as a religious institution, shouldn't really bother you. So maybe that's why she's not married. But then marriage between a same sex couple should equally not bother you.

Personally I really don't see the problem here. As a Catholic I was taught acceptance and love. I have homosexual friends and some of them have been in relationships longer than hetrosexual couples.

Or maybe there's a bigger picture with Julia, maybe she's homophobic, she does have Jason Akermanis sending her text messages afterall...

Some things that have caught my attention

Here are some random things that have caught my attention that i possibly couldn't be bothered to write full blogs about.

1. iPods.
Thank Christ that finally Apple have developed software, and this maybe for touch's only i'm not sure, that allow you to edit your playlists direct from the iPod, it was getting mighty annoying to have to log onto itunes to change 1 song in a playlist.
I'm a big playlist user and so for me this is almost like the invention of the ipod.

2. iPads.
I hate that ad. "You already know how to use it." No i jolly well don't. I'm not an apple person. The only reason I know about apple is because they invented a little thing called the iPod. I like windows, i have a dell laptop. I do not appreciate the prices of apple products or the fact that most of the world use pc's because they're cheaper but not neccessarily better.
I may have an ipod touch but because apple seem to be against telling me how to use it, i don't really except to listen to music. I was hoping this great world of apps would be open to me but it's really not. Here's a hint apple, if you put a web address in your instruction book at least make sure it exists...

3. Housing Prices.
As a potential first home buyer I'm not really made all warm and fuzzy with the news it's going to take me 6 years in SEQ or 16, yes you read that right, in Stonington, VIC to save the deposit for a house.
They talk about baby boomers handing their kids the debt of their houses, nope forget about it, it will be me handing down my debt to my kids.
The governments, all of them, really need to do something to help rectify this, whether it's grants again for first home owners, australian citizens not people who have owned homes overseas and then come over here and get grants not really meant for them..., raise the minimum wage for first home owners are probably the people owning this money. Something needs to be done because at the moment it's ridiculous.

That's about it, the rest i really could be bothered to do full blogs on so read on...