Shane's blog

Sie Kommen!

My goodness... my last post was in April! Talk about slack. Well I had a few minutes free this morning and decided to give you all an update.
My pen pal Sandra as mentioned in my last post and her friend from uni Eva-Maria are coming to Australia for a holiday! In fact they arrive at 7:30am on Saturday. This is going to be an amazing holiday and we have sooooo much planned. Due to my cousin getting married on the 15th and Sandra and Eva only being able to get September off we've planned a slightly unconventional itinerary for our trip around Australia. I was only able to take 3 weeks off as well so for their first week here the girls will be left largely to their own devices to explore Perth and surrounding areas as they want. On Thursday and Friday of next week they will be coming in to work with me to sit in on classes at Swan Christian College as they have both just finished their teaching degrees. The following Monday (week 2) we will be off to Uluru for 3 nights before coming back to Perth. Due to time restraints we will probably head straight on to Katanning to visit my family down there as soon as we have repacked our bags. We'll have 2 nights in Katanning and then drive to Busselton for my cousin Shonel's wedding. We will return to Perth on Sunday for 1 nights rest in Perth before we fly off to Melbourne (week 3) for shopping, wine-tasting in the Yarra Valley and to watch the penguins come in on Phillip island. 3 nights later and we'll be off to Sydney to experience the sights and sounds of Australia's cultural capital. Our stay in Sydney includes a dinner cruise out on the harbour and a day-trip to Canberra. Off again after 3 nights and we will be heading to the Gold Coast. 3 days gives us 1 day per theme-park! Our last stop is Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef. This leg of the journey includes a visit to the underwater viewing platform at the reef and the "Kuranda Experience" with a scenic train ride through the Kuranda rain forest and a cable-car ride back over the top.
We are all three very excited and really looking forward to the whole trip. I've never done anything like this before so it will be a great new experience for me and of course the girls who have never been south of the equator!

Next year I'm thinking of visiting Germany... we'll see. Anyway, stay tuned for live updates while we're on tour and I'll also be posting photos as we go.

Hello again

Hi all,
I don't know if anybody even reads this but I think its still good to write things down or you forget over time. I really should practise what I preach though :)
Anyway, I didn't get to dye my hair for the worlds greatest shave this year because it happens to go against the uniform policy for staff/students at the school where I work. I also kinda left it all to the last minute so I didn't get any sponsors either... oh well maybe next year!
One of my pen pals (who is now a good friend of mine) might be coming to Australia for several weeks at the end of her exams in a month or two which will be rather exciting. If all goes well we're hoping that she'll be able to come into work with me and sit in on classes for a day or two to see how the Australian education system differs from theirs in Germany. I'd also like to take a few days to go down to Katanning with her to introduce her to my family so she can experience life in and Aussie farming community. My Dad grew up on a farm and his side of the family are all farmers.
Work is going well as always... we are almost finished our IT stock take for this year with only 2 more sites to go. It is such a mammoth task and incredibly mind-numbing, but I'm glad I've had help this time.
One of my close colleagues is moving to another client's site within our company starting this week. Its a great opportunity for him, although I know I'll miss him while he's away. We're hoping its only temporary and we've got someone else coming to fill in for him until the whole situation gets sorted out.
I've recently been going through all the sci-fi series I missed when I was growing up and watching all the ones I like the look of especially. This is partly due to the lack of anything decent on TV these days (not that I have anything against all the CSI and NYPD and other crime shows, but has anyone heard of too much of a good thing?). So far I've caught up on Babylon 5 (it was pretty lame but I enjoyed most of it none the less), Andromeda (excellent... right up there with  Star Trek in my books) and now i've started on Sliders. Its funny as you watch a series you get a little attached to some of the characters and its kinda sad when one of them is killed off. I just saw the end of Prof. Max Arturo which was a little sad. I'm hoping to find a boxed set of the X-Files next but they don't seem to be very easy to find around here at the moment. Might have to do some online shopping. Just so you know, I'm not a complete couch potato, I only watch them in my spare time and this list is over the last 6 months...
I've also joined a book club and have been compelled to start reading again... I love it but just haven't found the time lately. It seems if I don't make time I will never get things done. I've got to go to work now so I'll continue the rest tonight when I get home.

Peace to all and have a wonderful day!
-Shano

Worlds Greatest Shave

Greetings and salutations!
Every year the Leukaemia foundation runs a fund-raising competition called the "Worlds Greatest Shave" where people from all over Australia (not really the world, but who cares...) raise money for Leukaemia research by shaving their heads, waxing their legs or dying their hair. This year I've decided to do my part by dying my hair. Black with blond tips which I'll colour with coloured wax. Hopefully it will look ok. The point to do this I need sponsorship! My goal is to reach $2000 by the big day (March 17th). You too can be a part of this worthy cause by visiting the "World's Greatest Shave" website and clicking the sponsor button on my profile. This is a great opportunity to help out so that the scientists can one day find a cure for this terrible disease.
I thank you for your donations (did I mention there will be a prize for the three highest sponsorship amounts?) and wish you all peace and good health.

Bis bald!
Shane

Please comment...

If you have actually taken the time to read my ramblings (or even just browsed this vox) please comment. Let me know I am being heard. Incidentally, Google did hear this guy who had an idea he wanted to give them... www.cangooglehearme.com has his story.

Wierdness

I had the strangest morning on Thursday last week. It started just as I was leaving for work. As I was plugging my mobile into my hands-free kit I noticed that I had an SMS. I opened it, to find "Watch yourself tonight, i get off work early. Im coming for you shane..."
The odd thing is that I didn't recognise the number. The people I would normally give my number to are not the sort to send a message like that. Anyhow, being a Thursday morning and it having been a good week I was in a fairly jovial mood. I replied, saying "Thats nice, what are we doing?" - quite an acceptable response considering the wording of the original message. Almost immediately I received a response; "Nothing much. you will be doing a bit of dying though."
I have to say that this is my first death threat. I was fairly sure that this was only a joke by a friend of a friend or someone, and nothing much could spoil the mood I was in. I responded cheerily "Sounds like fun! :)" but didn't get another response. Still, I do feel a little special. I mean not everyone can say that they've received a death threat before.
I had planned to reciprocate by getting a friend of mine from work to call back pretending to be a police detective investigating my murder, but he didn't think he could do it without laughing, and work was busy enough that we never got around to do. Needless to say that the threat was never followed through. I'm still here (much to the annoyance of my sister ;) but I thought it was pretty funny. I called the number later that night, but didn't recognise the voice of the person who answered so I'm still a little puzzled about who it could have been who sent the message (I didn't actually speak to the person, just gave them the silent treatment).
The only other strangeness I encountered on Thursday was a fog that was hanging around near where I work. As the weather has been quite hot lately it was a little unusual to see fog, but thats hardly surprising these days with the weather being what it is.
Thats all I have for now. I should post more regularly, but I never remember or make the time, so I guess this will have to do.

Peace to all, and may your week be enjoyable and productive.
-Shano

Christmas

Its been over a month since my first blog and so much has happened. I should have written something before now, but never seemed to get around to it. Well no time like the present eh..?
Its only 9 days till Christmas and school is all finished. The students went on holidays about a week ago and the staff finished yesterday. Of course the hard working admin staff will keep going until the end of the week. I've been fortunate enough to get 2 weeks off, although technically its only one as nobody will be working between Christmas and New Year's. After the madness of last year's silly season it will be nice to take it easy. Now that the network at work is complete and all the bugs have been fixed I think next year will be a good year. I'm looking forward to the new technologies that we'll be implementing around SCEA.
I just watched an amazing movie called "One Perfect Day". An Australian film, its one of the best I've seen this year. The music in it is just awesome. Hopefully I will be able to find the soundtrack somewhere. iTunes has been annoying me this month as I've found it way too easy to buy music. I guess my self-control isn't as good as I thought!
Kait stopped talking to me a couple of weeks ago. She gave me the MSN address for a friend of hers whom she thought I should talk to, but she changed her mind and told me to block him. She completely flipped her lid when I told her that I don't like people telling me who I can or can't talk to. I think she was probably trying to hide something from me and had forgotten that he knew. Either way it doesn't really matter now, as he is rarely online and we only ever talk about the weather or work or politics. In a way I think this is isn't such a bad thing as everyone has been telling me I would be better off with a nice Christian girl, preferably one who lives in the same country!
I've been doing some work on a website for a new friend of mine, and learning lots along the way. One day I may become good at web design... but as with everything it takes time. There is always so much to do and so little time in which to do it all. Speaking of time, we started a 3 year daylight savings trial here in WA at the beginning of December. As usual, the government didn't fully consider the implications of their decision before announcing it, and of course they only came to the decision a week before it was due to commence. Thankfully Microsoft came to the party and released a patch for all our computers to fix the time, although we still had to manually adjust people's calendars for the affected months. Speaking to everyone I know about it, most people are still having trouble adjusting to the earlier start to the day. The stupid thing is that summer in WA the sun rises at about 5am normally and sets at around 7:45pm, but with DST it doesn't set until 9pm. This means that when people would normally go out to the beach or park or whatever in the cool of the evening, its now still hot in the sun. The worst thing about it is that it has taken us out of our timezone (which we share with China and Singapore - very large economic centres) just so we can be 2 hours behind the eastern states instead of 3. Go figure...
My colleague at Swan is leaving to go home to the Goldcoast in about 2 weeks, which is a little sad. I will miss working with him, but I recognise that we each have to move on when the time comes. Its also a good opportunity for his kids to see their grandparents before its too late. One the other hand, we've got 2 new guys who started this week which means we have 1 extra person to help carry the load. SCEA have finally realised what we've been saying all along... 2 people just isn't enough for 7 schools.
Thats about all I can say for now... there are some other things I wish I could say but this blog is open to the world and I would rather not have some people in my life know everything. Not that I'm living a lie or anything so sinister, I just don't think they'd understand and it may jeopardise everything. One day hopefully I will be able to tell them... one day.

Peace to you all at this joyous time of year, and may God bless you abundantly.
Bis bald!
-Shano

Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

Blogging eh? Well I've never really been one to keep a diary or any kind of journal of my life and experiences - least of all a blog, but lately everyone's been hopping on the blog bandwagon and I figure why not?

I suppose I should really start at the beginning, but then again, who really wants to read through my life story? I mean it isn't the most riveting read, and you would probably do better to grab a juicy novel or self-help book. I'll keep it brief so hopefully it won't put you to sleep.

I was born in Perth, Western Australia back in July of 1985, the first child of my parents. The experience was so traumatic that I could barely speak for almost a year! Skip forward a few years and you would find me at a small public primary school about a 10 minute walk from our house. Seven years later and after a significant amount of bullying, discoveries, learning and personal growth, I graduated primary school and went from being a big fish in a little pond to being a little fish in a lake. I must give a special thanks to my primary school teachers who prevented me from becoming completely eccentric and self absorbed (although the likelihood of any of them reading this is extremely low).

High school was a lot better as I attended a private school which was run by the uniting church. I actually had quite a few friends, and was respected by most of my peers. I personally think that this school (St. Stephen's School in Duncraig) is one of the best in the state, if not the country. They have a great music program, which allowed me to excel (compared to what I had been able to do) and I achieved my 1st grade AMEB theory and Piano practical grade, as well as a Pass with Distinction for my grade 4 AMEB piano practical. Some of the best times of my relatively short life were spent playing music. I was a member of nearly all the bands and choirs, and even started a barbershop quartet. Sadly in the last couple of years we all went out separate ways, but that is another story. High school flew by, and by year 12 I was about ready to step out into the big wide world.

The last 4 years have gone by so quickly, i'm not entirely sure if I even experienced them or if it was just a dream. Straight out of school I went to TAFE (which for all the Americans reading is somewhat similar to your college) and studied for 18 months, completing a Diploma in IT. During the the last 6 months of that I worked part time at a local computer store, going on to full time when I graduated, and even becoming a store manager. Unfortunately due to a steady decline in business and (in my opinion) bad management, a number of us were let go. Exactly 1  year after I started, I finished. This turned out to be the best thing that could have happened because at that time I was contemplating leaving anyway. My idea was to study audio engineering, but I guess God had other plans for me, because literally 1 week after finishing at the computer store, I had another job working for an IT service company (where I still work). I am really happy working here, because every day brings new challenges, and the work is interesting and varied. Because the company provides IT hosted services and support (among other things), I have been assigned to provide on-site tech support to one of our biggest contracts. I help to maintain and support the computer network for an organisation of 7 private schools (a mix of primary and secondary).

So that is yesterday and today. I don't really know what tomorrow will bring, but whatever it is, i'm sure it will be exciting. Voltair once said "If we do not find anything pleasant, at least we will find something new." Every day brings new hope, new ideas and new challenges. I do have hopes and dreams, but I think I will leave them for another day.

Peace be with you all!
-Shano