School's out for summer!!!!

My classroom is bare and looking rather dull. The only thing left are the student profile words which are hanging up too high for me to take them down. I look at those words and wonder if I will stick to them over the course of my summer.

• I will be an Inquirer "How much is your beer?".
• I will be a Thinker, "I wonder if it will be cheaper for me to buy a bottle or a jug?"
• I will be a Risk taker, "I wonder if I can make it across the 8 lanes of traffic in Hanoi after consuming beer"
• I will be Principled, "No, a happy ending is not neccessary but I will still give you a tip"
• I will be Caring, "Cint, it's ok, just let it all out, I'll get you some water and hold back your hair"
• I will be Open Minded, "I understand that your way of life depends on giving happy endings"
• I will be a Communicator, "I promise that we can go home just after I sing one more round of Land Down Under on this Karaoke machine!"
• I will be Reflective, "Maybe, that last beer was one too many"

The principles that my students live and learn by each day will not be forgotten by me on my summer holidays! BRING IT ON!!!!

Tagged again .... all about me

Lillian got me again with this tag - it's going to take thinking on my behalf, but I'll see what I can come up with...

Rules: Each person posts the rules before their list, then they list 8 things about themselves. At the end of the post, that person tags and links to 8 other people; then visits those people’s sites and comments, letting them know that they have been tagged, and to come read the post, so they know what they have to do.

1 - I was born on the 29th of February. Born mid afternoon (or so I am told) so no chance to be held on to or squeezed out any earlier. I celebrate my bday 3 years out of 4 on both the 28th and the 1st... I milk it for all I can!

2 - One year for Christmas I got rollerblades and a matching set of grey t-shirt and bike shorts with the Beverly Hills 90210 logo on it... cool

3 - I nearly wet my pants in Kindergarten because Mum put me in a school dress that zipped at the back. It didn't occur to me to just lift it up to pee.

4 - I am still convinced that the day I came home from a friend's 21st when I was only 17 and had drunk a two litre bottle of coke mixed with a hip flask of Jim Beam that Dad couldn't tell

5 - I have successfully completed The Centurion 4 times... on one occasion I also had an extra can at 50 just for kicks... (The Centurion is the challenge to drink 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes)

6 - I don't remember the 80th to the 99th shot of beer on any occasion that I have successfully completed The Centurion

7 - I worked a ski season in the US in the year 2000, was riding my board like a true snow queen and then crashed and tumbled into a screaming heap. I smashed my elbow into a zillion pieces, comparable to a car accident I've been told, and I now have plates and screws in there and have lost about 30 degrees of movement.... I tell this story to everyone I meet.

8 - I once pretended I was a leprechaun

Ok, I am not sure if I know 8 people to tag since Lillian already tagged The Lost Boy and BangkokAli, and ChristinaG has done this already... ok, it's time to spread my wings here a little and mention some other blogs that I am reading...Damn it - Greenhaddock and Beaman have done this as well.... I'm out there looking for folks who haven't been hit yet... struggling

I tag Ange (no, it's not me!), Sloth, LaNina, Lynn,

My sister arrives bearing gifts...

My little sister rolled into Bangkok last night from Melbourne, mate it was so great to see her! She had me worried for a short while at the airport; she didn’t come out with the masses of obviously Australian tourists disembarking from the same budget airline. I had images of her watching the friendly Thai customs officers searching through her bags, pockets and whatever other orifices they could get their hands on! Luckily it was just that Cint had already been swept up in the lackadaisical manner that we love and hate about Thailand and she was just taking her sweet ass time about things.
My little sister is kinda my hero. I have never in my life met anyone who laughs quite as much as she does, and it’s an infectious laugh that just lifts the mood of everyone around her. We have a weird relationship really; we’ve never actually spent a whole lot of time together as adults. She went away for uni so we missed out on spending much time together during those drunken uni days. Almost as soon as I put my pen down on my last exam I had my bags packed and ready to go so we once again missed out on seeing a whole lot of each other. Of course there were family get togethers, lunches here and there with our other sister but rarely the occasion for extended socialising. My older sister and I studied in the same city, so she was always having me over for dinner and meeting me out for beers (note that I rarely had her over for dinner as I lived on campus and wasn’t ever really a reliable host!) My older sister and I have had lots of time together, we’ve pissed each other off, fought for extended periods of time and then kissed and made up enough times to know that we still love each other. The last few times that I’ve been home in Aus my little sis has been away on her own worldly adventures and we have once again missed the opportunity to hang out. Over the last 4 years I would not have spent more than about 6 days with her at any one time, and each of these 6 day blocks would be separated by months and months of not seeing her. But with all of this absence, I think we’ve actually become closer. Yeah, we most definitely have. We are so similar and yet so different (she’s a skinny little thing with an eye for fashion, this is the most obvious difference!) but we both enjoy a beer and she makes me laugh with her stupid jokes. So the next 5 weeks will be a true test and will hopefully be truly awesome! We will hit the road and cruise from Hanoi down through Vietnam, across Cambodia and then back to happy old Bangkok. Bring on the fun!
(Oh, and about the gifts - I can't exactly reveal any information relating to that...)

It's all about the Music

I got tagged by Lillian. I'm concerned about doing this meme - I often get in trouble for being a little bit too young, and admitting my favourite music is certainly going to confirm this for a lot of people! But here I go anyway!

5 - You’re going on a long journey, what five albums MUST you take with you? Albums that you need to listen to regularly.

(This changes a lot! But this is what my ipod tells me has been popular lately!)

1. The Waifs - Sink or Swim (I can't get enough of their folky harmonies and cheesy lyrics)
2. Dixie Chicks - Top of the World Tour (Country tunes that I can sing really loud and really badly with!)
3. Madonna - The Immaculate Collection
4. Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope
5. Mika - Life in Cartoon Motion (AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME FUN!)

4 - What four albums/songs do you most associate with a journey or travel experience? You know, the ones you listen to that instantly transport you back to a place and time.

4 Non Blondes - What's Up.... Grade 8 School trip to Tasmania, I'd made a mixed tape (remember those!) and it was the only one we had for the whole trip. Sitting on the back seat screaming out our lungs to this song was great fun.

Hunters and Collectors - Throw your arms around me... My entire, wonderful, memory filled 3 years that I had living at Menzies College, Latrobe University. Everytime I hear it I think of the beautiful and loving friendships that were formed over those years....

Emmylou Harris - The Tennessee Waltz... As a kid we would take long trips up to Pambula in Central NSW every other Christmas to visit my Nana. We rarely had much input as to what tapes were played so we just had to try our best to enjoy Mum and Dad's selection. I'll admit that I rarely hear this song these days, but if I did it would take me straight back to the backseat of our silver Toyota Tarago, winding up over the hills on the east coast of Australia with my sister and I in tears over the fate of this man's loved sweetheart....

Rent the Musical soundtrack - Melbourne to Robinvale/Mildura road trips. A good 6 hour drive that we often completed up and back over the course of a weekend for 21sts, random parties or to ease the boredom of college on the weekends! Myf, Meg, Ez and I would belt out these tunes and then stop for a while to contemplate the meaning of the lyrics - oh we were moved! One Song, Glory!

All 3 - Your three favorite songs of all time? (This really is NOT easy!)

Better Man - Pearl Jam

Burn One Down - Ben Harper

The Boxer - Simon and Garfunkel

2 - Two feel good songs, the ones that are guaranteed to lift the blues and put a smile on your face.

Goodbye Earl - Dixie Chicks... so it's about an abusive husband getting what he deserves, but it's sung in such an upbeat way it always makes me smile!

Irene Cara - Flashdance

1 - Absolute, overall, undoubtedly the best album of all time, in your opinion.

Madonna - The Immaculate Collection

(Note that this took me ages! And I must have changed every answer at least twice)

I’d like to know what sort of music gets Bangkok Ali, Christina G , LaNina and Sloth reflecting

Who let the dogs out?

These photos were lifted (with permission) from Bangkok Ali - cheers Al!

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If you've hit Bangkok Ali's site in the last couple of days you would have seen some evidence of a dangerously raunchy night out we all had last Saturday at Mojo's Bangkok. It was the annual end of season netball bash and the theme was (obviuously) School Disco. Maybe we went too far with the fish net stockings but here in the Land of Smiles it is just too easy to go too far! I can't think of anywhere else in the world that you could put together such awesome uniforms in only a few hours AND for less than $10! Rebecca and I hit Pratunam markets on Saturday morning and came away with fish nets in all the colours of the rainbow, neat little white school shirts (80 baht a pop), school skirts complete with front and back pleats and funky old school trainers. Add to that some creative hair and make up maintenence, some lollipops and lots and lots of Madonna and Bon Jovi and we had ourselves a night of nights!


(For those who didn't already know, the title Who let the dogs out? refers to the name of our netball team The Mad Dogs and not the fact that I think we look like dogs - obviously we don't!)

Facebook is starting to take over my life....

So I was warned and warned again about the dangers of facebook. Initially I figured the warnings were just about the huge masses of emails that you receive, I didn't realise that the warnings were related to the fact that you VERY quickly become massively addicted to this online community! You instantly will find yourself reconnecting with people you haven't seen or heard of in 15 years! I mean, I am not sure that people really want to be reconnected with their classmates from Grade 4, but the beauty of it being online and non contact is that you can ignore or approach whomever you like! I am now checking it before my email inbox - it's seriously that bad! Is anyone else hooked? Are there people deciding to just stay well away from it?

I need a new title for my blog

OK, I am calling out to everyone that ends up here on my blog....

I'm starting to get a few more hits, people are linking to my site which is flattering and it seems that people are hanging around for a little while longer (more than the early average of 3.5 seconds) which means that perhaps they are reading what I've written! Great!
So, I need your help... I want a new blog name. From here to there obviously came from a minuscule amount of thought, and even with dedicated thought I still can't come up with something that I like.... so, it's the NAME ANGE'S BLOG COMPETITION and it starts now...

Prizes - all the glory you can muster....

Beach time!

The long weekend last week called for a much needed city break and what better place for it than the island of Phan Ngan. The pain and cramps of a nasty overnight bus ride were eased by a breakfast beer, bowl of noodles and a sun burning beach sleep. And we'd only been on holidays for an hour! We did a couple of dives with Haad Yao divers, while our instructor seemed to be permanently narked, he was relaxed and chilled out and guided us through two great dive sites (one of which involved a swim through a rock chimney where I cut my leg - hard core). The beers after diving hit the spot and it wasn't long before I thought releasing firecracker rockets was not only a good idea but extremely bloody hilarious! Ashley quickly became rather maternal and expressed her disapproval - I think it was more that I made her husband light the rockets and put his body parts at risk that made her a grumpy Nana for the evening. But seriously, imagine a huge exploding firecracker rocket shooting of uncontrollably into a resort, possibly into a bungalow! Hilarious! Right? Right? Are you laughing or shaking your head disapprovingly? Laugh!