Well.

Writers Block.

What a MF. I can crap on OK, but I just need to get going. I mean I could start by saying hello or something lame like that, but I need something punchier. Something to draw the readers in, a hook if you will. Ok lets try again.

SEX!

No I have your attention, I can tell you that I am hanging here in Western Australia at my little brothers house trying to download some software to fix his PC, which has more infections than a large city hospital. But this isn't why I came all the way to Perth.

I am technically over here on a business trip, and since I have a meeting at 9 am on Monday morning, it was the choice of getting up at 4 am on Monday to get on a flight, or come over Friday night and spend the weekend with Andrew in this lovely city which I lived in for a good part of 2000/01.

The weekend hasn't been all PC maintenance. Friday night when I got over here we went for a quick beer at the Lucky Shag, a fine little bar over looking the Swan River before heading off to one of my favourite Perth haunts, the Royal India restaurant. Magnificent curry, good wine list and impeccable service - everything you could wan't from a local curry joint. Actually I must admit it was a bit wierd, I haven't been to this place for a few years, and all the curry joints I generally like to eat at in Adelaide are your laminex table take away type affair. So to have silver service with curry was a bit bizzare, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Saturday we decided to go for a spot of wine tasting in the Swan Valley. Our first stop was Houghtons. Nice venue - crap wine. I am not saying that all Houghton wine is crap, far from it, but when you to to a million dollar cellar door, you expect more on the tasting list than 7 wines in the $10-$14 range. I was really keen to taste the current vintage of their Frankland River Shiraz ($30), since Karen and I are currenlty enjoying a case of the '98. But no amount of wine talk BS would convince the pimply teenage girl behind the counter to give us a taste, so we all agreed that the take over by Constellation Brands had sent the Hardy Wine Company to the dogs and went to the next winery down the road. The name escapes me right now, which is not really surprising since we had lunch there and never got around to leaving until 5.

They had nice reasonably priced wines, home brewed beers, and a scenic cafe by a lake. It was a beautiful autumn Perth day and we just whiled away the afternoon drinking, chatting and enjoying the serenity. We spent Saturday night on the couch watching Return of the King on DVD and drinking some more beers.


Andrew and Nicole while away the afternoon 

Today the weather hasn't been as good, pretty windy with the odd spot of rain. We had breakfast in Freo, and then following a quick trip to the markets we spent the afternoon in possibly the best pub in Australia, the Sail and Anchor. There is just something about a pub that brews its own beers, and then serves it in glasses that could be best described as vases. If Perth has got it over Adelaide in anyway, it's that our pubs have poker machines and thier's have micro breweries. Thier's attracts serious beer lovers while ours attract feral people in track suits keen to blow this weeks dole money on the futile dream of "winning big". They have live music while we have pokie bleeps and bells.... OK I'll get down off the soap box, but you get the idea.

We are off to see "Super Size Me" at a preview screening tonight so I will report back on that later.

Today, My buddy Steve and I finally got around to closing a life changing chapter on our lives, the XFM chapter. What is XFM? Check out this link for some back ground information.

XFM 94.3

Long time readers of this blog, and I mean back to the first post long time readers, will remember that I made mention of being on the come down from the Jamboree at the time. I didn't really reflect on my experience in detail though, and I think that now is the time. I need to say from the outset, I owe scouting a lot. Most of my greatest experiences and achievements have come from the scouting movement, and I would have never met my wife or any of my closest friends if I hadn't been involved. Scouting has given me the chance to attend Jamboree's, Ventures, Moots, travel internationally, perform in theatre and get involved in some very rewarding community service. However, the jewel in the crown of my 20 something year association with the scouts was the Jamboree just gone, AJ2004.

Steve and I built and ran the radio station. Doesn't sound like a life changing experience when you put it in a sentence like that, but believe me it was. We planned it for nearly two years, and we put in countless hours to make sure that we put on the best station we could for the 9000 scouts and 2000 leaders in attendance. We didn't do it on our own of course, we had a team of helpers, and what a team they were! Talented, dedicated and a whole lot of fun - they are all now friends for life.

I won't spend too much time talking about how the station ran for the two weeks of the Jamboree, you can read about it in detail on the official website liked above. I do however want to mention what a great time we had, and I hope the kids memories of it are just as fond as mine.

So why was the final chapter of the XFM experience closed finally today, when the station went off air over 5 months ago? Well we used the OB caravan from PBA as a production studio for the operation. As you can imagine, its not something you can tow with any old car, so we didn't get around to towing it back to PBA from Woodhouse until tonight. My dad came and towed it with his Commodore, which is a story in itself, but that's for another time.

It was a strange experience to go up there and get it that's for sure. The site that was so vibrant and full of life, with infrastructure everywhere and multitudes of kids having fun on long summer days while we were broadcasting is now cold, stark and empty. All that is left now of XFM is a website and the studio caravan that we spend so long restoring, standing like a silent monolith overlooking the creek at Woodhouse, with the cardboard cut out of Max still smiling out the window.....



Myself, Carolyn and the Sorfadet on the way to present the Live and Exposed program 

Hi Ho, James here back in the blogging chair after it was briefly occupied by Karen.

Yes it's true, as you can read below Karen has made her virgin post, and she kindly helped me out by cynically reflecting on the family dinner we just went to so I don't have to.

So this leave's me to reflect on something else. Boxing. Boxing? I hear you ask. Yes Boxing. As a part of my eternal, and yet remarkably futile attempt to change my body shape to something other than round, I decided to take up a bit of lunchtime sport. Of course I could have chosen volleyball or aerobics, but since I am one of those guys who generally likes to back himself just a little too much, I chose to start taking boxing training at the gym. And here is my story.....

I turned up at the class and there was about 8 fellow workers from Santos with me. It started pretty well with the warm up, we did some basic punching moves, and the instructor said I had pretty good technique. Who said going to Salisbury High wouldn't pay off someday? After the warm up, we paired off with people we were to attempt to hit for the next 40 minutes. Safe to say the guy from corporate I paired up with could have punched seven shades of shit out of me if he wanted, it turns out that I am not as fit or strong as I think I am. Anyway I started with the gloves punching into his hands, and of course being the bravado boy I went in hard punching his hands with all I had. Later, I realised this was a mistake, and if I paced myself a little maybe I wouldn't be as sore as I am now. But as I've always said, I regret nothing.

After what seemed like a long 3 minutes of punching, it was prize fighter Pete's turn with the gloves. He hit hard, I was glad his punches were landing in my hands not to the side of my head. A bell then rang, and we moved on to the next 'station'. No punching at this station, just one on one situps for a couple of minutes, Jelly belly vs the Washboard. Joy, why do I sign up for this sort of thing voluntarily? 30 seconds in I am doing OK. 1 minute - starting to struggle and Pete asks 'are you OK?' 'I'm fine' I lied. 1 minute 30, almost can't lift my fat abdomenon off the deck. 1 minute 45 - tummy muscles are going to snap, 2 minutes bell finally goes. Phew. Off to the next station, something for a bit of a rest? No.....

Skipping. Cripes, that famous boxing footwork exercise. Started OK, I am not totally uncoordinated, but I sure ain't Micheal Flately either. I didn't start tripping on the rope until near the end when I started to get puffed out, when I could barely string two skips together. All the while of course my partner Pete was lightly skipping over the rope, changing feet and doing all the fancy stuff and hardly breaking a sweat.

And then back to punching. This time me and the instructer, who wasn't content to stand still and let me punch his hands, ohh no. He had to circle around me, and throw the odd swing back at me that I had to duck under. I have a new admiration for professional fighters - how do they keep this up for 13 rounds? Survival instinct I guess. But I kept my head on so I did a quick station on the rower, punching bag and the bike and we started all over again.

By this point I was running on nothing other than adrenalin and pride. EventTaking punches from Pete in round 2 started to hurt, each one jarring through the pads and up my arms. Like I said, I was thanking the lord at this point that I wasn't in a real boxing ring taking these blows to the head. Didn't make it to the end of sit ups round 2, and skipping round 2 was a disgrace, I think I managed to string 6 jumps together at best without getting tangled in the rope.

But like they say, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, so I guess now I must be a bit stronger now than I was this morning. Although this is a truth belied by my aching muscles! Never mind, I will be back for more on Thursday, can't wait for the pain....

G'day all Karen here. This is my first attempt at this new technology. At the moment on the great Australian Sick day! With some sort of virus that has attacked my Asthma.(So pretend I am breathing heavy)
James and I have just come home from a Russian Family gig at James' Babushka and Dedushka's. This little shindig was for family friends that came out from Belarus with James' grandparents, and oh my god....I still freak out when I see the amount of food. Then the eveing turned into a bit of a singalong with plenty of Vodka and Scotch flowing. I would like to see some of you compete with Babushka in a skulling competion. For 80 years of age she can sure drink me under the table!

Anyway thanks for listening to me crap on for the first time. Now I know it is not that hard I will give it a go more often. (So you don't have to listen to James also).
Cheers Karen

Hmmmm, not much been happening of late. Karen worked all of last weekend, and I did very little other than play Halo and get my arse handed to me at golf by Jon. Ho Hum. Hardly makes for a very interesting update, I mean sure there is a lot of stuff to get on the web and rant about, Dubya for example. Micheal Moore landed the Palm d'Or today for a documentary that is trying to run him out of office as the leader of the free world. One surely must wonder if his documentary is a masterpiece of film making, or if it is simply a documentary that a large body of concerned Europeans (and Americans who are on the Cannes panel for that matter) can identify with. But I digress....

For those who have seen the baby photos around here lately, and wanted a nephew update, here is a photo I took a couple of weeks ago.


Brock looking might cute.... 

OMG! OMG! Big News here!

I have been pondering about this blog entry for 24 hours or so know, wondering what witty little anecdote I could share from our lives. Yesterday, I went to one of those corporate team building days. Blogging gold really, I had a pretty cynical post dreamed up, but I am afraid that it's going to have to wait. Why? Well....

First of all big news from the weekend that I forgot to share, our friends Tara and Nick got engaged! I know! Pretty exciting stuff. But this is not why I have stopped myself from waxing cynical about the mission statement we had to make up for our team.

This is....



Yup, a new baby. Liam Francis Hinze, the new son of our mates Col and Kat, born on 19 May 2004. 4080 gm and 53 cm long, for those interested in the stats. Congratulations!

It was a long weekend here in South Australia, to celebrate The Adelaide Cup. However rather than attending the aforementioned horse race, Karen, myself and our closest associates headed for a shack on the coast. The long weekend at the coast is an Australian institution, and its easy to see why when a large part of the coastal regions of this big brown land of ours boasts views like this...



This photo was, without word of a lie, taken 3 steps off of the verandah of the shack we stayed at. The Pt Broughton shack is a quaint and comfortable building constructed single handedly by family friends Barbara and Norman, and a great way for a bit of soul reconstruction.

The eight of us who made the odyssey for the weekend had your classic lazy weekend, putting many hours into sleeping, reading, playing scrabble, monopoly and doing crosswords. Seafood, alcohol, chips and dips also featured prominently in the weekends activities. Personally I managed to get through a magazine full of crossword puzzles and read "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain cover to cover, so I count it as a very productive 3 days.

I have posted more photos of the weekend on the web, and you can view them by clicking on the handy link to the lower right. See it there? It says "click here to view James and Karen's photo album". Still can't see it? Try clicking here.

Let me tell you it surely does rule. Last night A few friends, Karen and myself visited the Adelaide entry in the Channel 7 reality TV show My Restaurant Rules. Being both food and wine buffs and suckers for reality television, this was an experience that we had been looking forward to for quite a while.

The Red Sea is located in Rundle Street, one of Adelaides more famous restaurant strips, and has proved to be a bit of a hit with the local populous. Well, it sure was a hit last night anyway, because we cued for 3, that's right, count 'em, 3 hours to get in. We decided to meet there just after 6, which in hindsight probably was a bit of a mistake. It would have been alright if we went actually at 6 and made the first sitting, but it was decided by all that a quick cleansing ale was required before dinner so we didn't actually get there until 6:30. But the hours in the line passed relatively quickly. We were mostly in the line with pretty nice people, and the hosts of the establishment, Nick and Emily came out and spoke to us on a couple of occasions.

There was a little bit of excitement in the cue however, mostly caused by a person behind us best described as a rotund, attractiveness challenged female canine. Aside from having her own gravity, this delightful young lady liked to smoke, and seemed to be smoking the stinkiest fricken cigarettes ever. Not that pleasant in a crowded line situation, so Karen, always the assertive one asked her nicely to step away from the line whilst she smoked. She petulantly complied, but returned to the cue later and Karen felt the planet woman blow on the back of her head in a bizarre display of smokers rights. We could have had a situation on our hands if one of her orbiting satellites hadn't intervened and said "Oh come on, I don't want go get in another fight! We've been in two already today!"

Finally however, we got inside and were seated, and I took a photo as proof.



So, after enduring a wait that you would never even dream of doing for any other eatery, what was it like?

In short, bloody fantastic. Food was superb, I had the signature duck dish, which was a glazed roast duck dish that literally fell off of the bone and melted in your mouth. Karen had a pork and scallop dish, and her assessment was equally positive. The sides were sensational, my particular favorite was mushrooms fried in butter with shallots. The fact we washed it down with a '93 D'Arenberg Ironstone Pressings Shiraz Grenache didn't hurt the experience either.

Service was mostly quick and efficient, although Leanne's meal was delivered some 3 minutes later than the rest of the table. A few points off there I'm afraid! The place did have a great atmosphere, the fun vibe almost made you forget that you were paying silver service prices to sit on benches. The plasma screens on the walls were a nice touch, and one of them was proudly espousing the "ambiance consultants" that had been engaged at the establishment. They did a pretty good job, because we all agreed the ambiance-o-meter was ticking of the scale.

You couldn't fault the enthusiasm of the hosts Nick and Emily, they go out of thier way to personally make sure every one feels welcome (including, I guess, even the F.U.B. mentioned above). The picture below depicts one golden moment when our very pregnant buddy Leanne was showing her growing fish to Emily.



Overall, damn good. So get your mobiles out now and message 5 to 1887517 to keep them in the game!

Ok, I have now completed the hand over of the technical look of this blog to the very clever people at Google, who run blogger.com. All we do know is provide the humor.

What does this mean to you, the reading public. Sweet Fanny Adams really, just another new look (I know, I know). What you should know however, is this. All of the other stuff that is on our home page, like the big brother sweep and the photo galleries are still there. You can get to them by clicking the link on the right, or by going to home.jamesandkaren.id.au

Jamesandkaren.id.au now points you here first, but you probably already know that since you are here.

But now that's out of the way I can go back to getting excited, because tonight we are going to The Red Sea restaurant, to finally get involved (in an albeit small way) in reality television. Woo hoo!

As part of my eternal laziness quest, I am trying blogger.com to make life a bit easier on myself.

Man this sure is easier, just type the rubbish in and hit go. No need to be firing up dream weaver and debugging and ftping and all that other wah wah. While it doesn't have the Geek appeal of a home built website, I think its better this way, because hopefully I will be able to get Karen to do some posts.

But hang on just a dog gone minute, I hear you say, where is the old stuff. Elementry my dear watson, you can find it here.

I'm not ashamed of it, I love video games. I always have, and since I am now 31 and haven't grown out of them yet, I've come to the conclusion I always will.

Since my first handheld game, the Nintendo classic 'Parachute', which my parent's bought for me in 82, I have been truly a video game junky. I used to hide under my doona with a torch until way after I was supposed to be asleep playing that sucker until I 'clocked' it. I then did the same with the more new fangled double screen games, with Donkey Kong II taking up the lions share of my time.

From then I graduated to the Commodore 64 in 84, and spent untolled hours of my youthplaying games on it when I should have been outside getting exercise. My particular favourite was the quintessential platformer 'Impossible Mission', a game which had a blood curdling digitised scream that helped spurn a life spend loosing my temper at innanimate computer programs. My mother used to loose her temper at me for screaming at the tv and calling it a cheat. I still have the photo I took of the score screen with my trusty Koday 110 camera to prove to people that I actually completed the thing when I nonchalantly started calling it 'Possible Mission'.

I did the usual run after that, NES, Super NES, Sony Playstation, Sony Playstation 2 (bought on release day), a game cube and various PC's. I never did own an Amiga though, and I always felt I missed out on some quality games.

So today, when the guy a couple of cubicles away from me at work posted a message on the corporate intranet that he was giving his Amiga away, with over 100 games to boot, I got mildly excited. I then had second thoughts, I mean this whole adult life caper, with a full time job, and housework and all the other responsibilities one assumes in adulthood has left me with a pretty substantial backlog of books to read, games to play and films to watch. I need about a 3 month period of paid unemployment to catch up - perhaps I'll try breaking my leg.

Fortunately, while I was debating the idea of bringing this nostalgic doorstop home, I overheard the guy give it to someone else. Lucky really, because I am pretty confident Karen would have been a bit dark on the idea of more clutter in this already cluttered study.

I think I'll just download an emulator.........

All a bit quiet lately, but we have been getting mildly excited that our round the world oddessey is less than 3 months away now. The house Karen and I are building down at Aldinga to fund the trip is progressing well, and now features walls and a roof! All's we need now is someone to buy it and we're set.

If you happen to be reading this and fancy a home by the sea, click on the friendly button to the left and read all about it.

The most exciting thing about this week has been that big brother is back on the teev. I know, I know, but we are reality tv tragics, and big brother rates up there with survivor as the best of the bunch. We have a bit of a sweep running and if you want to check it out, have a squiz under the 'other crap' menu on our home page

Ok, now I have got all of last weeks reporting out of the way, I can get on the business of reporting the recent goings on. Last weekend Karen and I ventured to the nation's capital to visit our friends Ben, Rebecca and Cooper. The occasion was Rebecca's 30th birthday, and what a worthy occasion indeed. It was a great party to venture to the coldest city in Australia for, and we caught up with a heap of old friends, most particularly Tara and Nick.



It was also pretty cool to see Ben and Beck's very cute but very cheeky son Cooper again. I know it's a cliche, but my do they grow up fast. Cop this photo - you would have to made of wood to not go oooohhhh!

Howdy doody again from James and Karen Land. This blog has turned into a bit of a weekly thing of late, owing to the massive amount of stuff that we've been up to.

The first thing you will notice is that I have given the site a bit of a face lift. It is now a little cleaner, and a bit easier to edit which is the clincher for me, I am lazier than I am website proud I am afraid.

Now on my last update, I promised to expand a bit on my experience of ANZAC day. As I alluded to, I helped my Gramps, who is suffering failing sight, march in the ANZAC day parade. For those non Australian readers, ANZAC day is a commemoration of those who have served Australia in battle over the years. The date and the name of the day both come from the legendary battle of Gallipoli in World War I. I won't expand any further on the origins of the day, you can read about it here.

My grandfather served in the 13th field battery in Papua New Guinea in World War II. Those who know some history of the second world war will know that the jungles of PNG were one of the most demanding theatres of the war. The troops faced low provisions, gluey mud, stifling humidity, all manner of insects and disease and a brutal and determined Japanese opponent. It was a moving honour to be amongst men who had endured and survived an experience that most of us can't even begin to imagine.

The thing about the experience of marching with these blokes is it makes you think. We have all been driving in our cars and seen and old bloke struggling behind the wheel and thought of them as a doddering old man. It is easy to forget that when most of these blokes were our age, they were stuck in some foreign hell hole being shot at for the freedoms we enjoy today.

After the march, we went off to the traditional battalion lunch and AGM. Now I have been to a few AGM's in my time, and this one was both the different and the same to others I have been to. Different in the fact the same blokes have been having this AGM every year for over 60 years, so the election of committee positions is done quickly and without debate. If you are willing and capable, you're in!

When it came around to other business however, it started to become like any other heated AGM. Debate was being had and motions were moved about the disgraceful (sic) standard of marching amongst the troops. Never mind that most of the guys are in thier mid 80's, thier pride still allows them to get into arguments about what to do about not being able to march in time.