City2Surf

Madness (amongst other things) overtook me at the weekend. It wasn't hard to spot. I was running down the middle of the road on some of Sydney's widest boulevards at 9am. Not the act of a sane person.

The insane part was not the road but the running. I was perfectly immune from traffic. Or certainly from the kind that hurtles along at 80kmph; a bone crunching wall of metal and strengthened glass, uncompromising in the face of 80kgs of me. No, the usual lorries and SUV’s had been regulated to back-roads in favour of more pedestrian traffic. For Sunday was the appointed day of Sydney's annual City to Surf fun† run.

It shouldn't be that hard. After all, Bondi is no more than 5k from the City centre. And yet the sadists that run the event feel it is necessary to take 70,000 people around 14.4kms of coastal cliffs.

Granted the views (panoramas across the harbour, encompassing the city, water, parks and the iconic Opera House, the long sweep down to Bondi, past rolling hills and ocean) were magnificent. But who had the strength to enjoy those?†† Not your correspondent, that’s for sure. I was too busy watching the rest the competition pass me by.

No. Madness was not the only thing to overtake me. I was passed by pretty much everyone taking part in the race. I was about a kilometre in when the first cartoon character sauntered by. A dragon as I recall. There were innumerable spider-bat-super-men and I was left in the dust by at least one giant valentine. It was on the upward slope of the appropriately named heartbreak hill that a man pushing a pram jogged along nonchalantly, as though I were stationary.

But the final insult came two days later when the timings came in. I was pleased with my own time; 88:59 – 8 minutes improved over last year. Then I saw the time for my friend the uber-competitive Hideko; 88:36 – 25 seconds my better.

Time to take up cycling

_

† A deliberatively provocative use of the word. I have already drafted a missive to the Advertising Standards Institute of Australia.

†† Actually Mark was probably enjoying the view. Mr. Cahill finished the race in just over an hour, and there’s every chance he didn’t break a sweat. Good job Mark!

Capsize Kayak

When it was proposed I was decidedly unsure about it. Kayaking on Saturday, despite the fact that it was six degrees - the entire idea was clearly completely nuts. My politicking against the plan was too subtle and I was left wondering if might be worth breaking my own arm to avoid the event.

And then, once again, Sydney surprised me.

The weather was lovely and the water warm. I have first hand knowledge of the water temperature as I managed to capsize my vessel 20 metres from the shore. This provided David, Elaine and Hideko with a solid 20 minutes of laughter but, pride and fingertips* aside, I was unhurt. Later on there were mangroves, a veritable blizzard of jellyfish and some of the most magnificent homes in Australia.

Winter! What Winter?

* Climbing out of the water over razor sharp mussel-shells

Questicon

The trip to Canberra was long overdue. It's been months since Danielle and Chris moved there and I keep missing them when they're in Sydney.

Alison drove me down and began the weekend ferrying 8 of us around a selection of ACT's finest vineyards. An excellent start to an evening of revellry at Danielle and Chris's apartment.

The following day was dedicated to the many cultural opportunities offered by Canberra. After a preliminary investigation we decided to give the Questicon experience a miss. I should have guessed it from the name, but it was not quite what I expected. I was thinking "Smithsonian", "London Science Museum" or "Deutschemuseum". Questicon is more like a giant McDonalds Fun Centre. A group of about 6 of us stood in the entrance hall for about a minute. The blinding primary colours and near-riot of 6-year olds did not play nice with our collective hangovers. One of the girls commented that the tableau was causing her a pain in her ovaries and we departed for the relative serenity of the National Gallery.

We took in a visiting exhibit of "Soft Sculptures". These were a wide variety of objects that droop, ooze, squish or bend. It's just the sort of thing to do when you have a hangover. A lot of the exhibits put me in mind of the then state of my own grey matter; deformed and smushed.

Next time I shall go to Canberra I shall tick another gallary off the list. But I think Questicon will have to wait until mid-week when I have some borrowed 9-year olds and a clear head.

Citizen Kelly

It was over the Christmas 2001 holidays that I decided to emigrate to Australia. I had been working in Cork and when I returned there in January 2002 I resolved to make a new life Down Under. The process was expensive, bureaucratic and lengthy. Yesterday (May 2nd, 2009) it came to an end as I took the Australian Citizenship pledge.

It has been a long journey from researching citizenship on the web in Cork to standing before an immigration official in Parramatta - but I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

Zero Sum Loss

April 25th is ANZAC day.

On that day in 1915, under Winston Churchill's plan to open the Black Sea for the Allied forces, the Australia and New Zealand Army Corp landed on a beach on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey. In the following 8 months, over 8,000 Australian and 2,700 New Zealand soldiers died - without gaining more than a few metres of beach. The ANZAC legend recounts the hardship, bravery and sacrifice of the troops.

ANZAC Day is remembered at dawn with "The Last Post", "Advance Australia Fair", "God Defend New Zealand" and "Reveille". The events at Gallipoli have had a defining impact on the character of the two nations and their respective military traditions.

It's also given them the curious gambling tradition of two-up. This game is legal in pubs* for a few hours on this one-day-a-year. The idea is that WWI ANZAC's (or 'Diggers') played the game and doing so on ANZAC Day is a form of commemoration.

Basically, in two-up, you are betting on a coin-toss. You 'agree' the bet with some person standing in the same circle as yourself. You have a fifty-fifty chance of winning and the house do not take a cut. So overall it's a zero-sum-gain (or loss). I like the idea - best odds in town! Just go on a random walk and as long as you are adequately capitalised, take home as much as you like.

*It is not clear to me that this is strictly true. It's possible that the playing of two-up on ANZAC day is a mass exercise in the flouting of the law. No one cares.

Afraid to Move

I love my little house. I love that it is still a work in progress. I love the potential inherent in its manifold weakness. I love that it is mine and that it is a place where I can have things the way I want them.

I’ve had a cleaner in. Not that it needed a cleaner* you understand. The house was perfectly tidy. Granted I had accumulated the odd bit of bric-a-brak that I didn’t need but nothing on a significant scale.

The thing is; my boss from Ireland is coming to stay, for three weeks, with his wife, and I want the place to be nice for them. Just ordinary householder’s pride really. So I decided that the way to have the house really clean (as opposed to ‘boy clean’†) was to get a cleaner in.

Anyhow Jelena has done a Stirling job. Such a good job, in fact, that almost any activity I can think of is guaranteed to make the place less perfect. For those of a mathematical disposition‡;

So I’m just going to sit here and be very quiet...

______

* It is quite clear to me now that it actually did need a cleaner.

† More than tidy but less than certain-not-to-give-you-the-plague.

‡ I'm looking at you Dave

Softer Still

Sydney has softened me to the point that I think 11 degrees Celsius is insufferably cold. But it is easy to see why: Your correspondent writes to you from his back-garden hammock; Cold drink in hand on a balmy (32C) December day.

Being December there are abundant reminders that Christmas is upon us. Despite the heat, we are still treated to a diet of woollen-clad Santas and snowmen. However, the marketing is by no means as relentless as I remember from Ireland. The transplantation of Northern-hemisphere festivities has left Australia with the bizarre traditions of hot-puddings and open fires at a time when fruit, seafood and beach-sports are far more appropriate.

I will take little part in any of it. Christmas to me is the light at the end of the tunnel that makes the descent into a cold, dark, wet, winter just about tolerable. As the days lengthen and the temperatures rise there is no need to dangle a carrot over the solstice. In Australia Christmas is rightly celebrated as God intended: in June.

Getting Softer

There’s nowhere in my experience like Sydney; cosmopolitan and dynamic, forward looking and welcoming. It’s set on Port Jackson, possibly the world's most stunning harbour, easily surpassing Cobh or San Francisco Bay. And around the city’s shores are numerous sandy beaches that put Santa Monica to shame. But the Siren’s song that lured so many of us to these shores is the sunny, moderate climate which defines Sydneysiders' relaxed lifestyle and love of the outdoors. So why is it so fecking cold! Seriously, the Australian tourist board owes me some warmth.

That’s the thought that wafted through my head recently as I awaited a friend at Newtown station. I was stamping my feet against the cold and wrapped in full body armour against the winter; a blue Michelin man in my Dad’s old duffle coat, thermal hat and gloves.

I’d have been sidestepped by all and sundry for appearing a little gauche were I at any other Sydney station. Newtown is adequately alternative for me to have been unremarkable were I sporting a balaclava or peacock’s feather. As it was, the entrance to the station had been laid siege by a smugness of over-zealous revolutionary socialists and the casual observer could be forgiven for assuming I was one of their number.

I noted that my new comrades were engaged in a futile effort to elicit signatures from weary commuters. The petition was to be in support of one cause or against another perceived grievance; whales, Iraq, Iran, the-closure-by-health-inspectors-of-a-vegan-friendly-Newtown-cafe. It really didn’t matter; no one cared, least of all me. The only people interested in discussing the burning issue-du-jour were Newtown’s burgeoning population of homeless loonies. These are harmless folk, all too eager to engage our lead tovarish on the topic of what was wrong with Sydney. He in turn politely nodding in agreement, equally eager to move the fellows along as he was to add new X's to the meagre list on the bottom of the supplication.

Meanwhile I stood, ruminating that there was precisely nothing wrong with Sydney other than that it was a tad glacial at the moment. I had checked, and the temperature was expected to hit an overnight low of 11 degrees Celsius. These are insufferable, polar, Arctic conditions! Call in the National Guard! Well, at least it is dry and nice during the daytime. And since that low point the Spring is finally bringing finer weather. Seriously though, perhaps my peacenik friends are right; maybe we’d all be better off in Soviet Russia. Brrr...

Luck of the Irish

It was something of a mixed weekend for the Irish in Australia. Collectively we were unfortunate with the result of the rugby but my personal good fortune in the Blue Mountains more than made up for the disappointment.

Prior to the commencement of the rugby you’d have had to say the Irish had a fighting chance of taking home some silverware. The Wallabies might have been at home but the forecast was for rain which ought to have levelled the teams. The climate in Ireland gives us more experience of scrapping though the mud. However, it was not to be. The crafty Australians have got a roof on their stadium. Tantamount to cheating to be sure, but sure, what can you do. The conclusion was 18 – 12 to the yellow team.

But fortune did shine on one Irishman. For, while the 15 Paddies were without luck in Melbourne there was one lucky leprechaun in the Mountains. Not only did our team win a pub quiz but, of the three lottery tickets I bought for $5, two were winners. What’s more I walked off with the grand prize; a colour laser printer. Come on you greens!

It certainly was a bountiful expedition. Between the 10 of us the takings looked more akin to loot than winnings. Apart from the printer, power tools and attachments for power tools, there were children’s games, garden chairs and gardening accoutrements, a tray of meat (very Australian) and bottles and bottles of wine. Time for a barbeque methinks.

'Ello 'Ello

The police turned up this morning. And in bigger numbers this time.

The knock came early. I wasn’t quite fully dressed, but the blue ones were in no mood to wait for sartorial adjustments.

The last time I had a policeman appear at my door he came on his own. His tone was conversational, almost convivial. Not so this time. The four burly lumps of Sydney’s finest crowding my narrow doorway this morning wanted help with their enquiries and looked as if they knew how to get it. I had a mental image of being whisked away into a Kafkaesque nightmare of waterboards and devilishly ingenious things with tweezers.

But this is Australia not Orwell’s Oceania so they were quickly disarmed with the news that Karen Anderson did not live here. Miss Anderson is, in fact, completely unknown to me despite the fact that she’s been giving my little terraced house as her address to all and sundry. Strictly speaking the (now fugitive) Karen has given her address as an apartment within my house. Apartment number 319, would you believe. A neat trick getting that many apartments into my two bedroom Victorian.

The lone policeman from the prior visit was searching for a gentleman with a similarly confused domicile. Presumably that individual was an accomplice of master-criminal Anderson. The pair are doubtless hatching intricate plots at this very moment, impervious to statute behind a vast web of assumed addresses.

It would seem that somewhere in Surry Hills (perhaps a parallel Surry Hills, “Surrey Hills” perchance?) there is building on a “Belvoir Street”, bearing my number. This parallel Number 5 is a significant edifice of many flats (a disturbingly high proportion of which house wanton criminals). The evidence for this parallel world is mounting. Aside from head-scratching constables, meter-readers and pizza delivery boys there’s been a steady stream of bemused individuals standing in front of my house with faces of bewilderment, often shouting into a mobile phone:

“No. I’m standing at number 5 now and it’s definitely not an apartment block. It’s a house.”

It would appear that the parallel world has a link to our telephone network.

This of course would all be harmless (if occasionally irritating) fun, were it not for the first incident of this nature. Nearly a year ago, when I first moved in I was woken at 2 or 3 am by frantic activity at my door. The first people I knew of to be misdirected here. I will never know if that ambulance crew ever found the people who called it.

Not Just Cricket

I don’t really get cricket. There’s something suspicious about a sport that takes a whole working week to reach a conclusion. In fact it’s a dubious proposition in my mind whether it can deservingly be defined as a sport at all. I think it is in fact ‘a game’. Honestly, can it be a sport if the spectators are getting more exercise than the participants?

By any standards cricket must have the most complicated scoring system known to man. Not just rivalling but actually surpassing GAA “points v goals” system in this respect. Consider the following score:

South Africa: 170, 178/4 (57.0 Ovs)

And that’s just the one team’s score! But that’s not what makes the whole pursuit so utterly impenetrable to the casual observer. All fields of human endeavour generate an individual argot, but cricket takes the prize for building its own private tower of Babel. The quaint English pastime has added to the lexicon: “Zooter”, “Bump Ball”, “Doosra”, “Silly mid-off”, “Arm Ball”, “Beamer”, “Bosie”, “In-ducker”, “Jaffa”, “Bouncer”, “Googly”, “Grubber”, “Leg-cutter”, “Yorker”, “Sticky wicket”. You could look up the definitions, but I promise you; you’ve got better things to be doing with your time. Consider the following excerpt:

“...he tried to hit off-spinner Shoaib Malik for six
with 21 needed and six wickets still in hand,
he was stumped”.

He’s not the only one that’s stumped by that sentence. Or this:
“Ireland reached 2 for 32 after 10 overs ...
Pakistan losing wickets when Hafeez (4)
was caught behind from seamer Langford-
Smith. Khan then followed with a third-ball
nought, caught at slip, to make the score
2 for 15”.

Cricket people say things like this all the time and actually expect to be taken seriously.

So why am I so concerned with this particularly bizarre example of the English practice of creating-a-sport-and- exporting-it- so-that-everyone-else- can-beat-them-at-it? Well the hint is in the two quotes above. We were all more than a little surprised last year to discover that not only did the Irish have a cricket team, but they had actually advanced to the World Cup in the Caribbean. Then they took the huge scalp of Pakistan – on St. Patrick’s Day! The BBC describes this as “one of the greatest victories in cricket's rich history”.

Over a year ago, Paul Davey, an Irish friend of mine based in Sydney, had the idea of making a documentary film about the Irish participation. He took a huge risk. Giving up his lucrative technology job and investing his savings in the venture. Paul had unprecedented access to the whole team. In a sense he became part of it, getting first hand reactions of the players.

The resulting documentary is a really good story, even if – like me – you don’t know the first thing about cricket. The players were all part timers and Paul shows them going from their ordinary lives as postmen and teachers to the superstar world of international sportsmen and back to their inevitable postal-rounds. And on top of that you will all remember the controversial, untimely death of the Packistani coach. The documentary has had great critical acclaim and I want to encourage you all to go and see it. To do so, follow this link.

5 Kilos of Books

I recently confronted an interesting conundrum. On a brief, 4 day, visit to Dublin I decided to send a portion of my Irish library to myself in Sydney. Between one thing and another it turns out that it’s really cheap to send 5 kilos of books and starts to get rather pricy if you want to send more.

This raised the question of what were my most valued books, by weight.

Thus while my Concise Oxford English Dictionary is valuable to me, weighing in at over a kilo it displaced far too many other works to make the cut. At the other extreme, even the lightest of my ‘Holy Bible’ collection was never likely to be scheduled for transportation.

[Some readers will be surprised to learn of my scripture stack. As I see it; if the Gideon Society give me their stuff it would be rude not to accept it. Taking their gift saves the next occupant of the hotel room from reading the thing and after a while you get a paper pile that can be useful for packing material, origami, or fuel.]

My 5 Kilo pack was made up of Carl Sagan, Karl Popper and Richard Dawkins works, but the real question for you, gentle reader, is; what would you take with you? (I feel this owes something to the last page of H. G. Wells’s ‘Time Machine’ which I may send in the next 5-kilo instalment).

Awake

It's 5am and I find myself wide awake and restless in Cork. I'd like to be asleep like everyone else, but my metabolism has other ideas. It's not really convinced about this whole Ireland business and is having none of it. As far as it's concerned we never left Sydney and we shall damn well rise when Sydney rises.

There is a possibility that I have unfairly accused my internal chronometer. An equally plausible suggestion is that excitement is keeping me awake. I have just finished a week of meetings and tomorrow I'll be in dirty old Dublin town meeting friends and family. The meetings have confirmed that I shall be rewarded with my own business in Australia and have instantly generated an enormous workload. I'm guessing that my enthusiasm for the task ahead, and general buoyancy over going home, are as much the culprits for my insomnia as jet-lag.

Ah! What's this I see? Yes! A glimmer of light in the east.

The Personal Trainer

It began innocently, as these things do. But looking back at that beginning now, knowing the suffering and pain that was to come, that innocence is unimaginable. Like a forgotten Eden, forever lost, as so many of us have been, since that innocent beginning.

‘Physical exercise is good’; an unassailable truism. And so our team willingly submitted to the regime. Weekly at lunchtime we would exercise under Mark’s direction. It was as simple as that, as innocent as that. So the compulsory, regimented, exercises began, under our new Personal Trainer (‘El Persodente’). If we had only known the road down which that simple, innocent agreement would bring us; a road of terrible pain, a road of wretched suffering, a road around Farm Cove and Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair.

As the weeks passed Mark’s gentle encouragement gave way to demands that we improve our times. Mark, or ‘Che Cahill’ as he insisted we call him, became a brutal disciplinarian. Each outing was more challenging, more arduous than the last. Che branded all objections as descent and they were mercilessly crushed.

The objectives were inhuman. It was only a matter of time before the effort would overcome one of us. Aziz was first to succumb; Poor, gentle Aziz. The demands of our leader were simply too much for him. He always lagged the rest of us. With our support he persevered. But one day we looked back, and Aziz was no longer there. What became of him? Did Che execute him? Did he die of sheer exhaustion? Was he sitting at his desk trying to polish off a bug during his lunch break? Who knows? Who could know?

Undaunted, the Personal Trainer commended our loss as a sign. He declared it ‘Year Zero’, and pressed us to, and beyond, the limit.

Words can not describe the horror that Tuesday lunchtimes (or Wednesday if it rains or whatever on Tuesday) now hold for us. The agony is monstrous, but dread of our leader’s capricious temper and fear of his wrath keep us running.

Congratulations Nina

Nina was always willing to go the extra mile. Now she’s jumped through hoops and snatched her MBA from the ambition tree.

It’s always good to be proactive and touch base with the industry to get a heads-up on the benchmarks for fast-tracking your career. The bottom line is that a knowledge-based strategic game plan is needed to prove you are a goal-focussed team player who is in the loop. You need to play hardball to empower a win. The prevailing philosophy is to quantum leap over your peer resources by obtaining a superior business oriented academic enablement. Thus pushing beyond the parameters under which most of one’s career competitors operate, therefore enhancing your value while radically reducing internal angst, synchronizingly marginalyzing your rivals to a point where they are almost nil as a potentially competitive factor, thereby dominating, in a total way, all the marbles. That’s what Nina’s all about.

But it hasn’t been just about picking the low hanging fruit. Bilaterals with Nina have been at a premium while she’s been at the academic coalface. We’ve all had to adjust to the low-Nina-availability environment. That was a paradigm shift that required us all to re-solutioneer our collective social interactions. Often Nina was engaged in valued added initiatives and needed to skip opportunities to exchange discourse regarding matters that were not within the strategic MBA-box. This had a negative impact on all of our bottom lines. Happily, newly equipped with her MBA, she’ll have enhanced face-time for us all. (Though we may never again understand a whole sentence that comes from her lips).

Well done Nina!

Meta Blog

It’s been quite some time since I’ve made an entry here. The drought is finally at an end; I’m back, by popular demand.

The record will show that, after 24 successive entries over the course of a year, (an average of a blog posting every fortnight or so), this blog experienced something of a hiatus. Fully two months have elapsed since my entry bemoaning the evils of white ants and their voracious appetite for all things wooden (not least of which is my house).

The white ants are at least in part to blame for the cessation of my scribbling. Or rather the effort to expunge the imprint of their munchings has consumed my free time to the point that generating missives for recreational purposes has taken something of a back seat.

It would appear that the long, dark teatime of this blog has not gone unnoticed. The initial, lone voice of disquiet has been joined and lately risen to something of a chorus. Many of you are demanding 'the return of the blog' (sounds like a bad B movie).

It is gratifying indeed to hear you express this interest. I might have been forgiven for believing that this forum amounted to little more than me talking to myself. (A practise I reserve for my solo trips to crowded cinemas). But here you are in your thousands demanding fresh entries.

And have them you shall.

White Ants

From the sheltered perspective of Ireland, Australia is a place populated by ferocious creatures. From the tiny Sydney Funnel-web spider to the gigantic Crocodiles of Queensland, from the fictitious Drop Bears to the very real Common Brown snake, it would appear that Australian fauna are intrinsically malign. So one shouldn't be surprised to discover the place if crawling with termites (or White Ants) earnestly bent on the destruction of all human constructions.

I knew there was some termite damage in the roof of the house when I bought it. "A couple of carpenters will sort it out in a day", I was told. Also there was no urgency to the work. It appeared that a termite invasion had been chemically thwarted decades ago but much if the damage was covered over rather than repaired.

When electricians recently descended on my little Surry Hills cottage, they exposed some of the damage in the bedrooms and I decided it was no longer feasible to ignore it. I set about identifying and replacing effete floorboards.



A lot of the damaged boards look fine on the surface, but they are little more than a paper thin veneer over a fragile honeycomb of minute tunnels. In many cases you can crush the stuff to powder with your hands and none of the affected floorboards would hold the weight of a person.



The photo above shows something of a low point in the life of my house; the carpets are up and the dead boards removed but not replaced. Meanwhile everything (carpets, underlay, deceased floorboards, replacement floorboards, disassembled bed, clothes) is piled up in the remaining bedroom.

As I write it has been put to rights. I have two bedrooms once again and slept in a proper bed for the first time in weeks. There's still a big tidy to be done and the downstairs remains formidable, but more significantly, I now live in fear of the "Revenge of the White Ants".

Sparks Fly

"Computers are the future", I was told by the career guidance teacher, "There'll be plenty of work in that".

In my old school, the position of career guidance counsellor was a sort of repository for senescent dodderies. My counsellor was an affable relic that was kept-on out of some kindness. There was some unspoken financial matter in the chap's past that restricted him from taking to pasture as he clearly needed to do. As a result every pupil was individually slumped before the fellow, to spend an hour of their life that they would never recover, as he dispensed the worst vocational advice known to man.

His determination of one's ideal path was algorithmicly linked to the most recent exam results. So the bookish were pushed towards the professions while less accomplished academics were told that lifelong nirvana could be obtained from a trade.

I was able to save the man the bother. Having made up my mind that software engineering would be my life's work at an early age. Even back in 1988 the grey had a vague notion that "computers are the future", and I saved myself perhaps 30 minutes of wasted teenage time.

Nearly 20 years on and I'm less certain. On the face of it the less erudite school boys have enjoyed two decades of unbelievable wealth accumulation. Sitting as I do now, in a home that demands the attention variously of chippies, sparks and plasterers. They can more or less name their price and certainly command hourly rates that make me blanch. That, of course, is if you are lucky enough to get a quote from them. I've had tradesmen who didn't turn up, electricians that took one look and vanished into the ether and a single quote from a sparks with a lasso and ten-gallon hat.

It seems to me that I would be a rich man had I taken up a trade in preference to a career in computer science. I don't blame the should-have-been-superannuated man. My mind was set and he could no more have made me pursue a life as a mason than as a medic. I fear the mistake was mine, but I do fear it was a mistake.

Butt Ban

This weekend marked the final opportunity to smoke in a public bar in New South Wales. I'm happy to announce that all my socialising will now be free of passive smoke.

House Warmth

The new house had it's inaugural party last weekend. It was something of a landmark event for me and I'm pleased to say it went swimmingly.

I hate throwing parties. For one thing you never fully enjoy a party that you are throwing yourself. There's far too much running around making sure that everybody else is enjoying themselves. And you have to expend a modicum of time with each guest so you never really get to have a conversation with anyone.

But the main problem with parties is the fact that it provides a potentially brutal barometer of one's popularity. First of all there's the decline-ratio: the proportion of the people you want to be there that don't want to be there. And in my case (having only been in the country for 8 months) there's the thorny question of having people to invite at all.

On both counts I have to say I was very pleased. When I sat down to prepare a list of invitees I was slightly worried that it would be depressingly short. I quickly realised that I had nothing to worry about there. There are friends from work, friends from my old house-share and of course the netball team. The decline ratio was also pretty good. And my little house was duly packed on the night.

My two sofas had arrived at 6:30am on the morning of the party. The only other furniture consisted of 5 milk crates and this fridge that arrived mid-afternoon.

Mandy and Aoife brought me shopping for all my party needs. (I would have been lost without them). The two continued much of the running during the party. I took each new guest on a tour of the property, while Nathan began an industrial scale production-line of baby-Guinnesses.

I'm very content that the party went exactly as I had hoped. Above all I had a strong sense that the people who had gathered there were of the highest calibre, and I'm deeply happy to have made friends with so many genuinely pleasant people so quickly after arriving in a new country.

More photos here.