Beating the black dog...

It's been an incredibly long six weeks. I can't actually remember a time that's been quite this tough personally. Depression is a very nasty problem, and unfortunately there's no easy way of dealing with it.


I always thought that I'd be the one to become depressed. I do, after all, have a family history of it. In this case, though, it is my partner who has become depressed. For the last six weeks he's been seriously depressed. There's not always a cause for depression but in this case it was triggered by an incident at work.

We have been seeing a psychiatrist, and the antidepressant medication is starting to take effect now. Hopefully that means that the worst is behind us now and he will continue to recover.

As a partner I have found it very tough. There's very little that I can actually do to make him feel better. That's the worst part - it's just made me feel quite helpless. Depression isn't like other illnesses. There's no physical problem that we can heal, no fixed time frame. It can seem like he should be able to just snap out of it if he wants to make an effort, but I know that's not true. It is a real illness that needs professional treatment. And we're getting that treatment - I just wish it would work quicker!

Anyway, the last few weeks have been very tough. I'm just hoping that from now on things do start to improve.

Beyond Blue - the national depression initiative.

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Leslie Howard at QPAC

It was really very exciting. My partner and I won two tickets to see Leslie Howard play at QPAC on Friday night. He was performing as part of the Queensland Music Festival, so it was great to be able to see him in concert. Apart from the fact that we actually won something (!!!), I love the piano and piano music.



This is Leslie Howard, playing Liszt (not the selection from the QPAC performance, though).


We only just made it. I was working in Melbourne all week and only landed back in Brisbane at 6:15pm. The concert started at 8, so I rushed home, got changed and we went straight back out. We got to the Concert Hall at QPAC just as they announced that the doors would be closing in two minutes. So we went straight in, sat down, and the concert started.

Howard started with Beethoven, followed by Liszt. I hadn't heard either of these selections before, which made for a nice change. (I'm not a huge consumer of classical music, so this wasn't really a surprise given the amount of music that Beethoven and Liszt wrote.) The Six Variations in F Major, opus 34 by Beethoven didn't really catch my imagination, but that's probably because I was still trying to calm down after racing to get there in time. The Liszt selection (Annees de pelerinage - Troiseme anne, S163) made more of an impression. Starting slowly, over the course of the seven pieces it did build into something that caught my imagination.

After the interval he played Borodins Petite Suite, followed by Sonata No.1 by Glazunov. Again, these were two pieces I'd never heard before. The Glazunov I thought was very good and a great piece to finish with.

One thing that did surprise me was that most of this music was relatively quiet and simple, in minor keys. It did have a rather downbeat feeling to it in that respect. So much of Beethoven and Liszt in particular are fast paced and quite extravagant in a lot of ways and these pieces were obviously some of their simpler and sparser works. The whole performance had a low key feeling to it as a result, at least for me.

Having said that, his playing was superb. He performed for two hours completely from memory (a trick I wish I could do!) and without missing a beat. It was overall a brilliant performance and I'm very glad we went.

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Heaven's Reach

I've just finished Heaven's Reach, the final book in the second Uplift trilogy by David Brin. This is the second time I've read it and it's just as good as I remember. Better, even.





This final book follows the continuing adventures of the Streaker crew and the other characters that they met on Jijo. It brings the whole series to a conclusion, full of surprises and suspense right up until the end.

I have to admit that I liked it better this time around. The first time I read it I enjoyed the pace of the story but got a bit lost. Brin has introduced a lot of new ideas that expand the reach of his Uplift universe far beyond anything mentioned in the previous books. There were hints, but in this book he lets loose and takes us on an adventure well into a transcendental future, where evolution takes some very strange turns.

In the end, most of the loose ends are tied up although some of the big questions don't get answered. The big question about the Progenitors and their return is never really answered, but there's nothing wrong with that. Life doesn't always answer your questions, does it? Sometimes you have to live with the unknown, and that's made clear in this book. People are parted without warning at a moments notice, there is death and sorrow, but also joy and adventure.

It's a good book. A great read - as I said, I had to re-read it to really enjoy it. But it is a fitting conclusion to the Uplift series, and leaves room for further adventures in the future. I'd like to see more books set in this universe sometime in the future!

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Missing home in Melbourne

I'm in Melbourne this week. Normally I'd be really happy about that - I love Melbourne and think it's a great city to be in. But this time it's a bit different. It's the first time I've had to come down here for work while leaving my partner at home in Brisbane. That puts a whole new spin on the joy of travel.




This is a business trip, too. I've been assigned to an exciting new project and have to spend at least this week in the Melbourne office. Fortunately, after this first week or so I'll be able to do most of my work from Brisbane. That suits me perfectly.

While I'm down here though I'm going to catch up with one of my best friends. We'll be going out tomorrow night for dinner. There's a vegetarian restaurant somewhere in Fitzroy that he wants to try, so that ought to be interesting.

In the meantime, I'm stuck in my hotel room. Melbourne is having a winter heat wave at the moment, so it's not actually as cold as it could be, but it's still not all that warm either. Why can't they schedule these trips in summer!!???

Anyway, that's about it - I'm looking forward to getting home on Friday night, just in time to see the Leslie Howard concert at QPAC.

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Laughing out loud: French and Saunders!

We made it into South Bank on Sunday night to see the French and Saunders show at the Brisbane Convention Center. What a great show!

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The evening started with dinner at Kapsalis in the South Bank parklands. The food was good, and they were more than generous with the portions. None of us went hungry, that's for sure. Just a tip - don't order the Seafood Platter for Two unless you plan on having at least two people to eat it. It was huge. I mean it - huge. My friend barely made a dent in it by himself. Anyway... I had the mezethes platter, and even that was more than enough for one person.

We wandered over to the Convention Center after dinner. There were crowds of people going in the same direction, as you'd expect for such a famous pair of comedians. But this led to the one disappointment of the night - I'll get it out of the way first, because the show was excellent.

The seating was horrible! We paid for A reserve seating, which was the mid-priced seating. The expensive seats had all sold out before we booked, so we went for what we thought would be the next best thing. But we were wrong. The cheap seats were actually the best seats in the house, so sometimes you don't get what you pay for. We were in row K, right at the back of the A reserve section. The problem was that the floor is level in the Convention Center so we couldn't really see the stage at all. We were below the stage level so had to look up to see Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, but because the floor was level we couldn't see over the people sitting in front of us. It was very poor planning on the part of the center. After a few minutes, we got up and complained to an usher. He then showed us to some free seats up in the side sections that are raised and on a slope. Even though these seats were not sold because they supposedly had an obstructed view they were much better than the seats we actually paid for. We weren't alone, too. Throughout the show people were constantly moving from the floor seats to the raised seating around the side of the venue. I would say there were a lot of unhappy people that night.

Still, once we'd moved, the show was fantastic. I love both Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. Absolutely Fabulous is an amazing TV show, and I still get the dvds out to watch it now and then. The Vicar of Dibley is just as good, although I've never gone so far as to buy it. They are both very talented comedians.

They did a lot of live performance, but broke it up with some pre-recorded videos. Here's one of them from YouTube. Take a look - it's hilarious. A very funny spoof of Mamma Mia, the movie.

So apart from the debacle with the seats (which we are complaining about!) it was a lovely night. It was great to see them live after enjoying them on TV for so long now. I can't believe they've been working together for 30 years - seems like such a long time, and they've done so many fantastic things in that time. I'd love to see them again one day, but this is their last tour together (hmmm - heard that from plenty of other artists, though, so we'll see!).

A great night - 4 stars from me.

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Eating Chives

We went out for dinner last night to Chives, a restaurant not far from where we live. My cousin and his family are in town for a week or so and we thought it would be great to catch up over dinner.

Apart from being close to home, the other attraction of Chives was the buy one meal and get one free vouchers we had. Aren't the vouchers on the back of your grocery vouchers a great idea?


We didn't make a reservation, so we were probably quite lucky to get a table. It turned out to be a smaller restaurant than I thought. Still, we did get in and got a table.

The menu describes itself as pan-Asian, although the main emphasis seems to be on Thai food. The choices include curries, stir fries, sea food to beef and lamb as well as vegetarian options, so there was a choice for everyone.

I can personally recommend the Chilli Jam Chicken Curry with coconut cream. It was absolutely delicious, and had just the right amount of spice in it for my tastes.

The only drawback as far as we were concerned was the amount of time it took for the food to be prepared. We were there for almost an hour before our main meals arrived, although that could have been because my cousin ordered the slow-cooked lamb shanks. Anything that says slow cooked in the actual menu should be a warning, shouldn't it? As a result we were all very hungry by the time the food did actually arrive, but it was worth waiting for.

I'm glad we went there last night, although it's probably not a place I would have gone if we hadn't had the free meal vouchers. Downtown Mt Gravatt isn't the most exciting spot for night life. Still, it was local and turned out to be very good. Well worth the trip.

And it was a great way to lead into what should be an exciting weekend. A good friend arrives tonight, and we're all going out to the French and Saunders show in Brisbane on Sunday night. Can't wait for that!

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Making money on the weekend!

We had a garage sale on the weekend, just to clear away some of the clutter in our lives. It was pretty successful and we got rid of almost everything we wanted to sell. It's amazing what people will buy, isn't it?



We started the sale at 7am on Saturday morning. You do hear stories of people queuing up before a garage sale starts to grab a bargain but that didn't happen to us. That was a little bit disappointing - we thought that the professional bargain hunters would be out in force, but not for us. Maybe that was because we only advertised in the local paper, with a small distribution area, rather than the city wide paper.

Still, we had a few people through. The first one turned up about 7:30, looking for tools, which was the only thing we weren't trying to sell! But people started turning up after that, and we got rid of furniture, kitchen white goods, an old dvd player, the washing machine, bed linen, a lamp and other bits and pieces.

We actually sold a lot of stuff to our neighbours across the street. Their son has just moved out of home for the first time so he needed a lot of things. They took the old entertainment unit, an outdoor bar setting, cups, plates, cutlery, and some other old kitchen trays etc. Basically we were just glad to get rid of it all, so almost gave a lot of it away. It's no loss to us and if they can use it they're welcome to it. And we like them, too!

So it was a successful day, and we now have storage space in our garage again! We may even be able to put a car back in there now, which hasn't happened for a few months. There are still a few items that we'll take to Cash Converters and others that we'll donate to Lifeline and then it will all be over and organised. It turned out to be a very good weekend for us. Quite a bit of work, but we needed to do it and didn't have any other plans for the weekend anyway, so it was win/win all around.

Now we can go shopping with all the money we made! (ok ok just kidding on that one!)

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Google keywords unlock sales

Using Google Keywords is the way to unlock the sales potential of your business. That's the story today over at the Brisbane Times. I thought this was pretty interesting as I've been playing with keywords a bit myself, so it got my attention when I saw it in a mainstream media outlet.


I guess the article itself is basically advertising. It gives an example of a small business that worked with a Adwords reseller to build their business. They picked their niche and chose their keywords and kept optimising - all the steps in a good SEO approach (which is being taught over at Smart Online Profit Systems). Still, it was basically an ad for the two companies mentioned. More good marketing!

Anyway, I just thought this was a good example of how website optimisation is going mainstream.

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Queening it up in Toowoomba!

We went to Toowoomba over the weekend for a friends birthday. It was a lovely weekend away, and as part of it we went to the Empire Theatre on Saturday night and saw Queen - Its a Kinda Magic. It was so much fun!

I'm not a huge Queen fan, but I do own one of their greatest hits albums, so I did know the most of the songs they played. I used to listen to Queen quite a lot when I was a teenager but I haven't listened to them much in the time since then. Bohemian Rhapsody is a favourite of mine (well, really, who doesn't like that song??) but their other hits such as We Are the Champions and We Will Rock you always get me going too.

The show went for just over two hours, with encore. The lead singer, impersonating Freddie Mercury, had an incredible amount of energy and stamina. I don't know how he managed to keep going for so long at such a pace. His energy and performance really made the show come alive and got (a few) people out of their seats.

The other cast members seemed very young, but were very good all the same. The music just cut straight through everything else with an energy that was just a little bit irresistible.

The lighting did give me a few headaches, since they insisted on shining some very bright lights straight at the audience. They looked like car headlights, stacked in rows on the platform supporting the drum kit. Every so often they would just blind us - now I know how animals feel on the roads at night! I guess it gave an authentic '70s/80s stadium concert feel to it all, though. The rest of the lighting program certainly added drama to the show.

It was a bit of a tough crowd, though. Apart from a few people - die hard fans who danced and sang along for the whole concert - most others stayed seated. We did too, but we'll blame peer pressure for that! Even though it was a one-night-only show there were still plenty of empty seats behind us. The whole audience did get to their feet for one or two songs, but mostly just sat back and enjoyed the show. I don't know how that makes the performers feel, but they didn't let it affect their performance.

Anyway, it was an excellent show. I had a great time, and even sang along for a few songs. It's a good thing the music was so loud, that's all I can say about that.

Definitely worth seeing!

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Infinity's Shore

I've just finished re-reading Infinity's Shore by David Brin and I still love it. It's the second book in the Jijo/Uplift trilogy and is just as good as any of the previous books he's written. Brin is one of my favourite science fiction authors and he doesn't disappoint with this book.






This is the second book in the trilogy and it continues the story started in Brightness Reef. Streaker, the dolphin-crewed starship, is still stuck on Jijo and is being hunted now by the Jophur. In this book the familiar characters from Brightness Reef (Alvin, Huck, Sara, Lark and Dwer etc) are joined by the dolphin crews, neatly tying this book in with the previous Uplift trilogy.

Brin obviously has a knack for creating believable characters, alien species and cultures as well as settings. The Uplift universe is in my opinion one of the best fictional universes. The writing is excellent and the characters believable and interesting. This book, and this series, just drew me in and captured my whole attention.

The alien species and characters in this book seem real to me, and don't feel like dressed-up humans which unfortunately is the case with a lot of science fiction.

For a start, I think the basic idea behind the series is a great one. Uplift involves older intelligent species deliberately genetically engineering pre-sapient species so that they also become intelligent beings. In this series, humans have uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees to full intelligence, while thousands of alien species have also gone through the same process and created a galactic culture based on this idea. It's a fascinating concept and one that I would like to see happen in real life, eventually.

The other main idea is that humans are only a minor, weak and persecuted race in the wider galaxy. This seems like a pretty realistic idea to me, too, assuming that we ever do get off this planet and into space.

Overall I think this is one of my favourite science fiction series and this book is a great addition to it.

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Revisiting old dramas

It turned out to be a tough weekend, which was definitely not the plan. In light of the dramas that happened yesterday at home I thought I'd revisit an old post.

Self-inspection.

It should have been a great weekend. It was my partners birthday yesterday and all I had to do was make sure the day went well. I thought that a family lunch would be nice, except that I ignored all the warning signs and some very unsubtle hints in the last week that some family members were just not welcome. That led to fireworks - lots of fireworks.

It's my fault - like I said, I ignored the warnings. But that's just me, really, plan something and hope for the best. I thought a birthday should be a family occasion.

So I came across a post I did here over a year ago on self-inspection. It's still pretty accurate - my character traits really haven't changed. I still have communication issues, and lots of them. That just made things worse yesterday as I really didn't know how to handle things after it all went wrong. I couldn't say exactly what I meant, and still can't. My partner is quite fiery so I always come off second best in an argument.

I guess the two traits that stand out right now in that list are: second guessing and self-sabotage. I'm always second guessing myself and always have doubts about what's the best thing to do. Right now I'm trying not to second guess myself about this relationship. I want it to work, I really do, but I still seem to be constantly screwing it up. Self sabotage in spades. Sometimes I'm just o blind that I walk into things without really understanding the consequences and so I screw them up unwittingly.

And that's what I did this weekend. I managed to turn the focus from a happy birthday onto problem relationships. Not good, not good, not good. And I don't know how to recover from here.

Anyway, I've got to go home tonight and talk to my partner and try and work things out. That will involve talking, but I've got no idea what to say.

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I hate Brisbane traffic!

I have to say it - I hate Brisbane traffic! The whole city is either a road work site or grid lock. Driving around this town is a horrible experience.

Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. Outside of peak times it's not too bad, but try driving around the city in the morning or afternoon peak and you're in trouble.

My pet hate is the Inner City Bypass to Riverside Expressway link. It is totally random and can take either five minutes or 30 minutes to get through and there's no way of predicting in advance which it's going to be.

The road works don't help. The whole city is a road work site. From Ipswich to the Sunshine Coast, you can't drive anywhere without running up against road works. I know that this is a good thing, in the long run, but right now it just makes for a nightmare commute, every day.

The government has been running a trial over the last month with some government workers doing different hours or working from home. This has made a noticeable difference in my morning drive, but very little difference in the afternoon. I hope they continue this in the future because I do think it's a good idea and it is helping.

Still, the traffic in Brisbane shouldn't be as bad as it is. the city really isn't that big and other cities around the world don't have this many problems.

Anyway, that's my whinge for the day. Rant over :)

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Having fun at home!

We've got a new project underway - check it out at the Home Stylers website and blog.

I've just posted for the second time over there. This post is all about blinds and drapes, just giving a bit of a personal overview of my experience when I moved into my first home. Nothing spectacular, but it does just highlight the need for planning!

Anyway, check it out. I hope you like it!

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New Zealand trips

I've been to New Zealand twice since I last signed in here. The photos shown here are just a few of those I took, but I thought I'd share them around.



I only made it to the North Island, as it was a work trip. I would love to go back to the South Island one day.

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Things change, things stay the same, life gets better!

How things change...

It's been over a year now since I stopped this blogging experiment. In that time life has become very interesting, and all in a good way!

It's been a year now since I met the person who has since become my partner. After spending all of my 20's as a single man it's been quite an adventure to have someone else around so much. We are now living together and everything is great.

Having said that, relationships turn out to be a lot of work! Life may have been simpler as a single guy, but it wasn't as satisfying.

Anyway, this last year has been a adventure on a very personal level. It has involved some travel, and lots of relationship and family stuff. Now I'm thinking it's time to get this blog back on the road. Let's just see how it goes...

Signing back in - J.

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