Last night Andrew and I headed off once again to see Bill Bailey at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda. It’s an impressive building built in the early 1900’s by the same guy who built Luna Park across the road. This theme park is one of two in the world that gives us a glimpse […]
Mordialloc Meandering
This morning I went for a walk around Mordialloc Creek for something a bit different. The area was established in the 1850s and over the years was a place for fishing and boat building. Those days are long gone now and it’s a quiet seaside town to walk or go get fish and chips and […]
What I’m Reading This Week
Here’s some bits and bobs of what I’m reading this week and some of my own opinions of the posts. Texts between Elon Musk and his Sycophants I rolled my eyes when I read that one of them would “jump on a grenade” for him. Bloody hell. Read this tripe and I dare you not […]
Garden Greens
I’m sitting here boiling some organic greens (“Chorta”) from my parents garden. My heritage is Greek, specifically from Crete and the food that I grew up on here in Australia has been from that part of Greece. So lots of greens (organic, no pesticides), olive oil, fruits, pulses and meats. Today my mum gave me […]
An Idea To Save on Gas
Yesterday I started my day with a lovely walk at my local park. We are lucky to live in an area considered the “sand belt of Melbourne” so we have a lot of green spaces and golf courses in the area. Some of the parks are manicured and kept in great condition because they’re also […]
Microsoft Asked Me To Present on How To Use Storylines (and Stories) for Business
This morning I presented to Microsoft’s Yammer Customer Community on How to Use Storylines (and Stories) for Business. Viva Engage is the new employee engagement platform (well, it’s the newly branded Yammer which is sitting in Microsoft Teams as the Viva Engage app). Currently Storylines (aka ‘blog’) is live in Yammer and the Stories feature […]
Bringing a bit of Crete Home
This afternoon I went outside where the tradesmen yesterday dug out some dirt in preparation for concreting being poured on Saturday. The dirt in our area is fairly sandy and nutrient. With the rain, there’s a lot of leaves and worms in it so rather than buy it for my pots, I decided to scoop […]
Do You Need To Be Prompted All The Time?
One of the things I’m scratching my head over is, at times, people have been asking me for “prompts” at work. Prompts to help them write posts to share what they’re working on. Prompts to to help them respond to posts they’ve been mentioned in our enterprise social network. Prompts to help them remind them […]
The Top 100 Tools for Learning 2022
Jane Hart has published her annual survey for the Top 100 Learning Tools for 2022 and it’s interesting. Here’s the detailed analysis. I like looking through these lists because it gives a good snapshot of what people are using out there and what’s trending or falling by the wayside. What struck me is that Twitter […]
To The Lighthouse
I’m reading Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse written in 1927. If you had the cast of Downton Abbey around a dining table but not talking to each other, instead thinking about each other, “a stream of consciousness”, the thoughts flowing from one person to the next, you get an idea of how this book […]
What Would You Be Doing Otherwise?
Last week I went into the office. It’s been encouraged (although not mandatory), to go into the office on one day of the week when the rest of the team goes in. The intention is to meet with each other in person, socialise and a change of scenery (I guess). I don’t mind going into […]
Short Story….Submitted
Well today I finally submitted my short story (2363 words) for our local council’s My Brother Jack Creative Writing Award. It’s taken a long time to come up with the story and the character. However, I found the setting quite easily. I imagined what my street would have been like in 1942 and back then, […]
What Did You Miss in August?
Here’s the writing and videos I shared in August Blog Posts On Doing Community Service On Giving Feedback Lockdown6.0 Part 2 Fuck, I’m tired (on the tediousness of lockdown) Summer Holidays (and how I’m noticing a change of values misaligned to the country I’m living in) Writing French Stories (On Language Learning) Ideas for How […]
Radio Girl
I’m currently reading a book by researcher David Dufty called Radio Girl: The Story of the Extraordinary Mrs Mac, Pioneering Engineer and War Time Legend (what a cracking title) and the more I read it, the more I believe that Australian film makers MUST make a film or a series about her. Violet McKenzie grew […]
Idiocracy
Ever since watching this movie many years ago where Luke Wilson plays a character thrust into the future where everyone is an idiot, the more I’m beginning to think that Australia is becoming closer to an idiocracy. None more so prevalent with the situations that have been playing out during our lockdowns here with massive […]
If You Disappeared Who Would Care?
This week, Amy Burvall @amyburvall posted this tweet. Initially curious but on reflection, confronting, she makes an excellent point. If you disappeared, who would care? On the same day, my mother calls me to let me know that it’s my sister-in-law’s name day (I’m Greek Orthodox, so Saint Days are celebrated). Mum was calling me […]
Survival Training
One of the television programs I’ve been watching recently is SAS Australia. The SAS is short for Special Air Service an elite arm of the Defence Force focused on covert operations. The program shows a group of celebrities who volunteer to put themselves through the toughest challenges and we also learn their back stories. The […]
Trying New Knitting Techniques
One of the skills I wanted to learn was to be able to knit motifs around the shoulder of jumpers and recently, I came across the designs of knitwear designer June Steingass from Knit.Love.Wool. The reason why I loved these fair isle designs is they remind me of the chunky nordic jumpers and cardigans that […]
Learning About the Secret Code Breakers of World War 2
One of the new rabbit warrens dives I’m doing to kill a bit of time is learning about the Australian code breakers during World War 2. Now I’m fascinated by stories of the past and recently I had found out that our street was the site of an intercept station in 1942 that played an […]
Learning French
By now you would have seen the tweets where I bang on about learning French. Many years ago in the (*cough*) I did six years of French but I failed. What a waste of six years of doing a language at high school! Since then, the only time I spoke the language was three times […]