Off to Tokyo once again - this time for the company christmas party.
I dont know whos going to be there - there was rather a poor effort made at communicating the party's existence to us, the great unwashed masses, but apparently tickets sold out rather rapidly.

I shall be taking my camera, so should anything exciting happen (like at the halloween party where the head trainer from my branch had a monkey on his head) I shall post photos.

Victoria Burns

This photo from Sale, where the bushfire in the hills is burning around 6000 hectares at the moment and pouring smoke into the air clearly visible from space.
The ash cloud reflecting the red glow of the burning mountains stretched to Bairnsdale, shown in the second picture, taken mid afternoon.


Trying to explain to staff at work the sheer size of the area on fire was met with disbelief. Putting it in terms relative to the size of Okinawa Island, they could not comprehend a fire this large. Nor did it seem to bode well with them that bushfires on this scale are a regular occurrence in Australia. I read somewhere today that south eastern Australia is the part of the world that burns the most, most often.


The third picture is from a NASA satellite showing the smoke cloud stretching up over central New South Wales.


I am hoping things calm down over the next week - because I shall be home for Christmas, and I'd really not like my country to be still largely on fire when I'm there.

It was a lovely sunny day today, and I was at Seaside School.

Being the second-to-last week of school, theyve already had their end of year tests, so school finished at midday.

In the staffroom sits a pot of something, perched on top of the kerosene heater, bubbling and festering away.

I made the mistake of lifting the lid, and what do I see inside? Not something yummy, like vegetable soup, but a thick, clumpy purple mass that reminded me of diseased porridge.


Asking the other staff what, precisely, this abomination was, and did it intend to develop a rudimentary intelligence by the end of the day, I was informed that, no, this was lunch, and would I like to try some?

"Er, sure," I ventured, gamely. "What is it?"

They informed me that it was a delicious, sweet soup made from the same beans they make anko from - anko being that icky red paste that goes into many unexpected locations, like obanyaki, bread rolls, and icecream. Oh, great. I cant fathom eating these things at the best of times, least of all when I believe I can see the occasional tentacle reaching out for help from within its depths.

Thankfully, there was a big staff meeting from 1:00 til 3:00 and my supervisor, the little rodent of a man, suggested I could go home early...
Going home early is good in of itself, but this also meant I got to avoid had to miss out on that particular soupy concoction.


So I head home early, which is nice, because its a lovely sunny day (ok, at about 9 degrees, but things have been worse). I decide to take advantage of this supremely good weather, and run a load of washing through and hang it outside to dry in the sun.
So in go my sheets, towels, all the bulky things that just dont fit inside my apartment to dry.
Once the machine goes on, however, the clouds start to roll in.
It begins to drizzle.

By the time the machine has finished its 60 minute wash cycle, the rain outside is bucketing down, and I abandon all hope of being able to hang my washing outside.

Right now, its dangling from rails across my hallway.