No Worries?

Tuesday 4 August 2009

This is my favourite Australian expression.  Not only does it fulfill the role of “Ok”, “right away”, or “No problems”, but, for me, it seems to encapsulate the Australian philosophy.  I hope I’ve caught some of that approach to life in this blog.

There’s a range of reasons I decided to do a blog of this holiday.  I guess it was my niece, Grace, who made me think of postcards in a different way after her regular newsletters home from her “gap year” in South America.  I wrote a weekly missive last time we were in Australia, and thought a blog approach would be a good idea this time round.  Not quite sure whether Pepys came to write his diary in the same way – but I’m sure we share the characteristic of being opinionated blighters!

I was also keen to set myself some disciplines of a challenge.  I had been out of sorts under the spell of the old black dog over the last year, including some time off work. I had just hit a brick wall and found it difficult to get anything started, and even more difficulties in completing it.  So the blog seemed a good idea from that side of things too – to get something done to short timescales.  It didn’t have to be a work of art (as if!) – just making sense would do.

It’s been harder than I thought – less so from the discipline of sitting down and writing something quickly (which was where I wanted to maintain some personal progress) – but more so from finding the opportunity to type up the blog, organise photos off the camera and on to a memory stick, and get online to make new posts etc.

For most of the time I’ve been using Ann’s notebook, which is fine except there’s no good photo manipulation software on it, and all the family wants to use it!  I wish I had downloaded IrfanView before we left as that would have made cropping photos and making them smaller (in bytes) easier.

However, I have now caught up with myself having had a good tippy tappy session on the 4 hour flight from Perth to Sydney (before the battery went low).

So this picture of me enjoying a glass of wine last night is probably a fair summary of where I am right now – No worries, mate!  Let’s hope it lasts.