Tress and I aren’t young anymore. That fact is made painfully clear as we ploughed through a cold weekend. On Friday night however, we had really warm company, as we caught up with A Hooi/U Marloney and Jason/Mel for dinner, and as has been the case in recent times, these Friday night wind down catch up’s stretched into the night and we ended up spending 3 hours in a restaurant that was busy and buzzing.
On Saturday morning, Tress did some housework – vacuuming and cleaning – as I took the easier path of going to St Alf’s for a training session. The annual school holidays program will start in over 2 weeks and I had put my hand up for a day’s work in the kitchen. Saturday’s training was on child safety and it was compulsory for all, regardless of the role one was playing. The trainer was very knowledgeable and it was a new world to me. Kiddo had left home for about 7 years now, and she hadn’t been a “child” in the sense of that holiday program target demography anyway. I learned heaps and being amongst an intergenerational group with loads of kids was a pick up I didn’t realise I needed.
After the training, I went home and later Tress and I went back to the car dealership to drop of an extra key to the MX5. We then dropped into a joint nearby for a really good lunch and then did some grocery shopping. The day had been cold and wet all day, but a little window of clearer weather opened up briefly and we took the little guy for his walk – he hadn’t been able to have his walks in recent days as it had been wet.
Later that night, we settled down to stream Chris Hemsworth’s “In The Heart of the Sea”. It was a movie about the travails of a whaling team brought about by a huge whale – white of course, as it was a tale that inspired the novel Moby Dick.
On Sunday it remained very cold and it was also very foggy. As we had our coffee and toasts, Tress excitedly said read out a message she received. Sarah, a cousin in Sydney, was going to get married. We made a mental note of being in Sydney in February next year.
After St Alf’s we headed off to lunch and then we went home and I quickly did the week’s cooking, as we had an interesting event later that arvo. We were to attend a meeting with Gladys Liu, the federal member of parliament for our constituency, at the home of a member of St Alf’s Some 25 people sat in the lounge room of Paul and Anna Cummings and asked questions or made comments about a number of issues.
About half a dozen of those who were there were young folks – about 20/21 years old – and other than environmental/climate change issues, they were also concerned about civility of public office bearers and transparency of processes and other issues. The economy, religious freedom, foreign aid, international relations and small business were also brought up and it was a really good meeting. Tress and I were the only Asians there, which was ironic as Chisolm has 20% Asian (predominantly Chinese) voters. Gladys said she decided to enter the fray because the Labor Party had nominated Jennifer Yang on the (purported) reason of her ethnicity. It was thought Ms Yang would attract the all-important Chinese vote, which was crucial as the electorate only had a 1.2% margin. Gladys said she thought focusing on race/ethnicity was wrong and by entering the fray (she was from Hong Kong) it would neutralise that point. I found myself nodding totally with that, and I’m glad we had someone who thought that way, representing me in the federal parliament.
That meeting ended a bit before 6pm, and when we got home, we hurried about our chores in getting ready for the new working week, before settling down to watch our favourite TV show.
The catch up on Friday night, the training on Sat and that meeting with the MP, had all made a really good weekend, the cold notwithstanding.
Ante 