Oh the places I have been...

and the things I have seen...

well these are the countires I have visited so far. (Including Canada, where I will be going in just over a month).



create your own visited countries map

Karate Kid

Quinn had his first karate grading 2 weeks ago. We all went to watch and it was so special. I felt so proud watching him. Some of the kids were clearly VERY coached, and seemed fairly pushed by their parents. I have not got all that involved at all. While I talk about it and some times ask him to show me his moves I didn't actually know what they were doing for the grading.

He listened very well and did everything as instructed. Hehad to follow by watching others with the more complex movements but mostly he was very good on his own. He managed to earn 2 stripes.
2-3 of the really good ones got 3, but many only got 1. He may be able to do well enough to move on to yellow belt if he practises hard.

Very sadly not a single photo taken of the event came out, and they are all plain black :((

Here is a photos taken at another event.

Time for school - and therapy

Quinn had his appointment to assess him for school readiness this morning. I dropped him off at 9am, and went back to get him at 11am. He seems to have had a lovely time with the psychologist, working and playing etc.

We still have to go back in a few weeks to get the full report and feedback, but she has already said he is ready for school and it's fine for us to send him. It's nice that my feeling has been validated, and that it's not me 'pushing' him. She also pointed out that we don't even have to apply for an exemption, because although he is on the young side he IS in the acceptable age group to start grade one. I started talking to him about getting school uniforms etc on the way home - exciting, and more than a little scary! :)

Griffin has been going to weekly physio play session for 2 terms now and the physio is happy with his progress so he will be ending at the end of the term. He may go on to have some (Occupational Theraphy) OT too if it's deemed necessary. He is also having weekly speech therapy sessions now, which he also loves and his speech is improving nicely. Interestingly his speech problem is purely a muscle tone issue (as with the physio), he was tested at having sentence construction, comprehension and grammar use of a 6-7 year old (he is not yet 4) !

It was picked up through his assessments that his primary problems were lack of confidence rather than real lack of ability, and both 'Doctors' have really helped him with this. He now sees himself as a 'Bog Boy' and will try things even when they are a bit hard, whereas before he would avoid things he didn't think he could do. I am very proud of him, and it's been lovely to see the transformation.

I am wondering if his problem originated at birth as he had a slightly slow and stalled labour and so we were marking time to see if I'd progress further without intervention. When I thought something had happened, I was told to hang in there and wait for the designated time before we checked again (and got possibly got disappointed). As it turned out when it was time for the check I suddenly started pushing and he was out mostly unassisted in 6 minutes, except for his stuck shoulder needing to be dislodged and turned, and he was a bit blue at birth. I am now wondering if he had a bit of oxygen starvation in that time?

Either way he seems to be catching up with the intervention now and has gone from not colouring in at all, or doing very light and half hearted strokes to full colouring in with no white visible through the crayon colour... He is also talking about being interested in trying some of the physical extra murals next year (gymnastics, karate etc) - this year he only wanted to do music.

I went to London to visit the Queen

Due to popular demand - here it is, or what I can remember of it anyway...

June saw me jet-setting around several portions of the globe, leaving me with much work and little time - hence the subsequent cybersilence.

After Bergen Norway; and then Newcastle KZN to be present at the birth of my newest nephew in short succession, travel was no longer seen as a highlight, but rather a chore. In 3 short month I have migrated from eager and excited tourist type to seasoned traveller. I have now perfected the flight sequence, and have learned how to ignore the person seated next to me, favouring movies and sleep over inane and insincere conversation attempts.

I was back at bustling Cape Town international airport, this time for my sojourn to London. This time however I was not travelling alone, and met up with Hilton and Jonathan of the infamous Shuttleworth Foundation. Hilton, who is such a seasoned traveller you can almost taste him, worked his charms on the check-in clerk, and although he fell short of getting us upgraded to Business class, did manage to get us seated in the upper deck of the plane (on one of the new 747-400). WOW.

Hilton had an emergency exit seat with more leg room than business class, and Jonathan and I had more leg room than normal and a ledge with storage space along the windows, which proved quite comfy to rest my legs on for a nice reclined sleep. The upper deck is FAR superior to regular economy class, and since there are less people the service is better too with more personal attention. I got the regular downstairs economy class on the way back and it sucked! It seemed more crammed than ever... doesn't really make sense, but there you go.

So after a relatively comfortable flight next to Jonathan or 'psycho boy' (the monicker the girl on the other side of him gave him) we arrived at the notorious *Heathrow* airport. What a let down. Heathrow is awful. Old run down, and totally unimpressive on every level. Every other airport I have been in has been way better. If I never have to see Heathrow again I will be quite happy.... so there!

The 3 of us fumbled around in the arrivals hall for a while, looking for Hilton's stash of pounds, and er trying to find the old bags that Jonathan had transported cigarettes for.. (enough said!). We finally headed for the tube, and managed to navigate our way around the ticketing machines and got onto the Picadilly Line and in the direction of Earl's Court.

We arrived at our Hotel (The K&K George) at about 7:30am. (This hotel is very weird, non of the staff really speak English, they are all Austrian!) Not being able to check-in at that time we had to make do with FREE wireless Internet access. So work horses that we are we logged on and started working immediately. After an hour or so, and consuming a suitable amount of coffee, I felt bold enough to brave London on my own, and set off to find the Canonical offices. This entailed a 2 stop tube journey - again trying to figure out the tube ticketing machine and then
find out which line to take and in which direction. Honestly this is easier in Thailand and Malaysia where the signs aren't even in English! It's easy to understand how Paddington Bear got lost down there...

Having found my way to South Kensington station I walked the several blocks to the office, which is modest and understated to say the least. The whole walk was very reminiscent of the scene in Notting Hill when they take a walk around a posh neighbourhood and see all the private gardens - that may actually have been filmed there...

On arriving at the office we immediately went to work, making arrangements for the summit the next day etc. Matt our CTO and who I technically report to was in town, so we made the most of actually being able to talk, and got all our status pages updated etc. Mark took us for a quick lunch at a sandwich shop and then back to work until 10pm. When it was finally declared dinner time. Although we already had a booking at the same place for the Saturday night dinner, Mark is a creature of habit and insisted that we go to the Goucho Grill around the corner for dinner. It's an Argentinian restaurant.

Next morning was the start of the summit. and I am out of steam - sorry that was a pathetic attempt, I'll try complete it sometime, but right now I need to beat my children and put them to bed ;)

Another week-end summary

I had a lovely week-end, for the first time in ages I didn't turn my laptop on once. We all went to my ex colleague Ryk's house for drinks on Friday. There were a few of my old work mate's there so it was great to see them again after 3 months. We all had cell hones stuck to our faces half the time though. The red wine and snack were great :)

One Saturday we all went to gym. I haven't been for about a month and it shows! (All I have done is eat, work, eat, socialise, eat, travel and eat! *LOL*). The kids had a quick swim, while I did 20 minutes on the treadmill and 5 minutes on the stair-machine. Pretty pathetic, but at least it was a start... After that we went through to Vicki & Stuart's place to watch the rugby and have a braai. I haven't seen that crowd for ages, so it was nice to be there again. It's an excellent entertaining house, everyone seems to just relax and enjoy and the kids do what they want and nothing gets destroyed.

Vicki as usual produced an excellent meal, and we all ate and drank more than we should have :)

Yesterday we got a gardener in - finally. I have been battling to find someone suitable, as we had some awful ones at the old house. This guy works at the kid's school, and seems to do a great job there. We have been trying to deal with the garden ourselves, but will so little time, and not being very good at it either, the garden was looking a bit shabby. He did a great job of clearing things out and trimming and making things look nice, and I was inspired to do some planting. So I went to the nursery and got a few things and planted them.

We took the kids to see Madagascar afterwards, which was fine (not great but ok). When we got home they rode their bikes around a bit, and then we just lazed around watching TV etc.

Hei from Norway

I am sitting in the hotel in Bergen Norway. I need to head to the conference start in an hour or so. I am hoping I can connect to the Internet at the conference because other wise I am going to have to spend R75 for one hour here at the hotel.

My main impression of Norway so far is EXPENSIVE!!!! The Krone is pretty much on par with the Rand, it was about R1:095Kr when I left, but things cost MUCH more here. In most cases 3-4 times what things costs in SA. Also some of the economies of scale don't make sense. For instance a 500ml coke costs 20Kr, while a 1.5l costs 28kr. Why would anyone buy the 500ml!? I have walked around and looked at shops and have battled to find anything to buy that we can't get at home and for much cheaper.

The town is very old and quaint and very pretty, it is very old fashioned though and is like living in another century... the inside of the department stores is modernish but everything outside is traditional.

I got here at 5pm last night. The flight was fine, and I was right on the wing in front of the bulkhead, where there are only 2 seats. I got both to myself, so while there wasn't much sitting leg room, at least I could stretch out over the other seat and even mostly lie down, so I did get a little sleep. My bags were booked right through from Cape Town, so I had some time to relax at the airport in Amsterdam (Schipol) airport is quite nice, very big and flashy and everything is shouting BUY ME! I had to keep reminding myself that airports are NOT a good place to shop ;)

I settled on trying every perfume instead... might be why I had a raging headache for the rest of the day :/. I wanted to sit down and have some coffee or something but I had no currency at all, and though it would be silly to draw euros when Norway prefers Krone (some places here take Euros, but many have 'NO EUROS' signs by the door - it has something to do with trying to keep the Krone strong..). So I just walked around the airport and then sat and read my magazine - thinking I'd get another here - NOT. I have been looking at magazines here nearly all are Norwegian only a few are not and they all cost 50kr and more. Even the Norwegian equivalent of YOU magazine is 35Kr. Anyway we got to Bergen airport at around 4pm yesterday, the airport is quite small.

There was no customs check or anything. I felt a little lost because the language is so different and in spoken form is unintelligible to me, although I can work out what most signs mean. I had no money so had to draw cash. The machine was all Norwegian as well, so that was a challenge. I drew 400Kr thinking that would last a few days at least. Then I thought I'd break one of the 200Kr bills so I'd have change for a taxi. So I got a 1.5l coke for 28Kr (I have discovered that you can get them from supermarkets for 14Kr which is better). ' So out I went to get a taxi. I asked the driver how much it would cost - 300Kr! Luckily I can claim it back. So my 400Kr wasn't going to go far at all. The taxi driver pointed out a petrol station, the price of petrol here is 10.2Kr. He said most of that is tax, and if the tax is taken of it would be around 3Kr - and we thought our petrol was expensive. The driver says he pays 38% tax on all his earnings and then everything in the shops has 20% tax on it too. He said a beer costs about 75Kr in a pub!

I am interested to know how much people earn here, because buying anything is not cheap. The hotel is quite nice, but also very old so some things are a bit tatty and dated, it's quite smart on the whole though. After getting here yesterday I took a walk. The hotel is a few blocks from Bryygen. Which is a traditional part of town along a fish market next to the sea. Lots of tourist shops and troll dolls, Christmassy sweaters (think Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones' Diary), Mooses etc. I was going to get the kids something small, but even a pair of socks is 60Kr. The more other places I see the more I realise how absolutely amazing Thailand is on so many levels - I want to go back! The other thing I have noticed here is that people are quite rude. Actually it's not actually rude, it's just not considerate. People keept to themselves and seem to only think of themselves. No one really smiles at you and neither men nor women hold doors for each other. They simply take care of themselves and don't seem to consider anyone else.

This must be why people think SA is so friendly because I am used to smiling at every second person I see and holding doors, and having them held for me. There's just much more interaction in SA. I decided that I didn't want a big meal last night, and didn't feel like sitting in a restaurant on my own, I also didn't want to be up too late so I went to a supermarket and got a yogurt and chocolate milk etc instead. I also found some 'magic beans' for the kids - you know those ones that flip over when on an incline? (I made some for a science project in std 4). It's cold outside, but not freezing. Pretty much like Cape Town weather at the moment with temps between 7-15 deg celcius - and then a little too warm inside. So you keep having to dress and undress... It's a bit annoying walking in and out of shops because after 2 minutes inside you start to sweat.

This morning I went out for a walk again. I walked all around and looked at a whole lot of shops. I tried all the perfumes again (will I never learn?) so now I smell like Cindy Crawford, Britney Spears, Naomi Campbell, Tommy Hilfiger, Donna Karan and Dolce & Gabanna all at once. I thought I'd see if I could find something for the kids, I went through and entire mall finding nothing that felt like something they would want or need or that seemed worth the price. I was expecting lego to be reasonably priced here as it comes from Denmark, but even that costs more here than back home. I was starting to think I would just get something at Amsterdam airport on the way back when I found some Boy Bratz dolls. They are actually pretty cool. They must be *last* season's ones because there are new expensive ones while these are marked down from 349Kr to 99Kr. They have a bunch of accessories and 2 sets of clothes, so they should be quite a lot of fun to dress and undress etc. I got one safari one and the other is a winter fun one. Should give them some fun and entertainment while I am in New Castle.

When I get back I am going to want to play with them! This morning at breakfast I made up a sandwich for lunch. Rye Bread with mayo, Norwegian cheese, smoked salmon and smoked mackrel. I just ate it now and it was very yummy. I have to be at the school for the start of the conference in a couple of hours. It turns out its about 3 blocks away - I walked past earlier, so that's no problem.

Quinn - to go to school or not to go to school...?

Many of you will know that I have been deliberating over the school starting age decision, and whether he should start Grade 1 next year (as he turns 6) or the year after (as he turns 7). At his parent teacher interview the teacher gushed about him, saying he was wonderful in the class, and had settled in as a new child at the beginning of the year brilliantly. She says his social skills are very good and she enjoys him a lot. We got into the school debate, and she said although she thinks he is coping wonderfully, she is reluctant to recommend sending him early. In her opinion he is 'still very playful'. She didn't had any really compelling reason to hold him back other than if he does wait another full year he would probably end up at the top of the class, and really excel.

We had already applied for Grade 1 next year at several schools at the time the debate started, and had received invites to attend interviews. I decided to go along to the interviews for the experience, and to check the schools out and see how Quinn dealt with being there. So we went to
interviews and Wynberg Boys and Rondebosch Boys. With Rondebosch being our preferred school.

Rondebosch had however already told us that they would really prefer him to wait until 7 before starting, so I was quite surprised to get an interview, but we kept our mouths shut and went along. I like the teacher Quinn has this year a lot. So I decided if he was accepted at Wynberg we would probably decline, and it was unlikely we'd get into Rondebosch as I had already argued the point with them, and with 400 applications for 100 positions, it's not easy to get in...

Quinn was all primed and everything, and was telling us about how he was going to be the biggest boy at Keurboom next year and will be the teacher's helper etc... Well yesterday in the mail we got acceptance letters for him from both Wynberg AND Rondebosch!!! Based on this I don't feel it's justified to say he is not ready, because clearly based on 2 separate interviews he's been considered ready.

I spoke to him about it today on the way to the airport and given the choice between staying at Keurboom, or going to Wynberg or Rondebosch he was adamant that he wanted to go to Rondebosch. So I have decided to accept the position and pay the deposit and see how he gets on for the rest of the year. I feel a bit weird about it, because it's what I 'wanted', but I just hope it really is right for him... plus Grade 1 will mean way more work and input will be required from us! Are WE ready for Grade 1!? *LOL*

Griffin needs some physio etc

With the big boys away until the end of the week-end Griffin and I are alone
for that time. I am looking forward to this, because poor Griff gets the short end of the stick a lot of the time. Quinn wants to be in charge and in front all the time, so Griffin tends to be pushed to the side-lines and a little forgotten
sometimes, so him and I are going to do our own fun things and bonding too. Starting tonight with going to gym with friends (Beryl with Max & Amber etc) and then to Panarotti's for dinner.

At the recent parent teacher interviews we were told that Griffin seems a bit slow physically in some areas, and we were recommended to take him to a physio for an assessment. We have known that his speech is not brilliant, which we think was caused initially by his tonsil problems, which caused his palette to be painful. But this hasn't totally improved since having the tonsils out.

Anyway the physio appointment was yesterday. The physio was very sweet. She was hoping that Griffin would be happy to be assessed without me in the room, but wasn't too hopeful it would happen. She was quite surprised at how confidently he was happy to separate from me - but he has always been like that. I could hear them interacting in the next room. Her conclusion at the end of the assessment was that while she doesn't think he is bad, there are a few areas where he is a bit behind (like balance, and hand-eye co-ordination), and she'd like to see him weekly for a term, because she is pretty sure that will help him to catch up.

I had recently started noticing that he is doing less than Quinn was at the same age. he also often says he is too small to do things and won't even try. he gets quite adamant about not doing stuff too. Between the teacher, physio and I we have realised that a large part of it is self-confidence and drive to do the things, they are also guessing that because something are also a bit hard for him to do he just avoids them altogether. Poor thing. so we are now focusing on lots of praise and encouragement and getting him to do things independently of Quinn and not feeling pressured about them.

We'll also need to take him to a speech therapist to see if we need to get something done about the nasal bubbly way he talks...