“Zakaria Zarie Binti” was the caption under a photo of a Malaysian weightlifter in the papers this morning. Zarie must be upset. It is bad enough that the photo showed her sitting on the floor, with the bar and weights still in hand, having just failed in a lift. Even her name didn’t stand up correctly. These silly Aussies who are not only Down Under geographically but have this uncanny ability to also get Asian names down under. It wasn’t however, all bad news. Malaysia is sitting pretty after day one of the XVIII Commonwealth Games in Melbourne – one gold and one bronze, both from weightlifting.

Australia may be top of the table but the haul was expected to be bigger. Scotland “stole” 2 gold medals from them in the pool, Ian Thorpe’s replacement (Craig Stevens) torpedoed in a different way, and the world record holder South African relay team put them firmly in their place (second place). They all seem however, to be enjoying themselves, except poor Craig. He was the one who voluntarily gave up his place in Athens 2004 so that the otherwise disqualified Thorpie could swim. This time, Thorpie was sick but poor Craig couldn’t quite step into his (Thorpie’s) the very large shoes.

Kiddo enjoyed watching it all on tv last night, and was the last one to go to bed. It was alright with us, since it is school holidays time. She did however, leave the lounge lights on and I only switched it off at 5 this morning. 10 more days to go for these games…hopefully she wont insist on staying up every night and I wont be switching off the lounge lights every time she stays up and be the last one to go to bed.

It is now less than a week to settlement of the house we recently bought. We are cutting it very thin: the bank’s lawyers had only yesterday confirmed the documentation is now ready for signing. Theresa has to personally pick the documents up from the lawyer’s office in the city and hopefully we can work through them this weekend and return them by Monday. We had pushed the mortgage broker for up to a week before, but have been told the bank has been inundated with applications so they are a bit backed up. Didn’t someone say there is a housing slowdown in Melbourne?!! Maybe I won’t hit the panic button yet but it is definitely time to hit the “pray!” button…

Running parallel to the conveyancing aspects of the move is, of course, the logistics side of it. We have been collecting boxes, packing stuff we don’t need to immediately use, stopped buying stuff (including certain groceries!) and categorising our stuff into “throw”, “sell”, “box” and “don’t-know-what-to-do, leave-it-aside-for-now” categories. Throw is easy. Box is also easy. Sell…this is a different ball game…

Last Sunday morning I jumped out of bed and gave Darren a call. Darren James hosts a popular “Buy, Swap or Sell” radio talkback show on 3AW in Melbourne. I told his audience we had a few items to sell and voila – within less than 5 minutes, I had my first call! It took longer waiting to speak with Darren! Within a few hours, we had sold our lawn mower (which is about to blow a few parts) and we have received calls asking about our fridge and washing machine. This morning Theresa contacted Darren again, this time via email and asked him to help announce our garage sale. Yes, garage sale – after attending quite a few, we are holding one! It feels like we are selling heaps of the stuff we hauled all the way from Malaysia! Kiddo’s toys and books, some of my books, and some of Theresa’s and my clothes. True to form, my dearest wife as the world champion organiser (she’s a genius) has laid out all the items to be sold, labelled them, put them into neat piles (some of them in little boxes) and would no doubt run everything like clockwork come tomorrow morning…

We still have to worry about other stuff: changing over utilities accounts and ensuring they remain connected, making sure the cleaners and removalists show up on time and… I don’t know. It just feels like there are 2 million things left to do. Now, where is that “Pray!” button?