No. 22 roman numerals are too hard

It has been a long time between newsletters. I am not sure of what my problem is, I think I just want amazing stories to relate and when nothing much interesting happens, I keep hanging out waiting for something exciting to happen

Mum moved house a couple of weeks ago.

She had her lounge suite cleaned before she moved, it is a dark blue woollen material and it is only 8 months old. The man that cleaned it told her it was the dirtiest lounge suite he has ever cleaned. (I find that hard to believe, my lounge suite is over 20 years old and spent six months in a shed and the cleaner didn't complain, then again, he might of been too disgusted to).

Mum said to him, my daughter is going to be so proud of me.(That is because dirt and mould are my friends).Mum said "do I make it into your book of shame" and he said no, he cleaned the carpets in a house the week before and it was so dirty he had to put on overalls and rubber gloves to pick up all the dirty clothes, tissues etc that were on the floor. Now thats something for me to aspire to!

When I used to live with mum after I left school, I used to leave half finished cups of tea under my bed until they went mouldy. It used to send her mental. Another trick was each Thursday she would ask me to vacuum, by Tuesday I still hadn't done it so she would ask me again. So every second week I would just turn the vacuum on and leave it running. I didn't vacuum, just left it making noise. If she heard the vacuum going, she washappy and didn't bother to inspect the work!

Claire is going to New Zealand with Sylvie for the school holidays. Sylvie's dad lives in NZ and she goes there a couple of times a year to spend time with him. The girls are so excited. As Sylvie is 12 she has to pay adult fare and Claire is classed as an un-accompanied minor, Silvie says that she will be Claire's guardian and they are already planning how to by pass the queues by being 'children'. Claire kepts talking about the exchange rate, I think she thinks she is going to get African Rand and be rich like we were in Africa.

We went to see Whale Rider, in preparation for the NZ trip. I cried nearly all the way through the movie. It was fantastic. Claire said in a bored voice, it was o.k.

A few weeks ago I met up with some of the gang from Bioproducts (GWF made me redundant, ruined my life, never getting over it) for Glenice's birthday dinner. Seng was there and I was very happy to see him. I asked him if he had been reading my newsletters and he basically said, "I dont have time to read that rubbish, I delete them, dont send them any more". I said didn't you even read the one I wrote about you and he said no, I dont want to read that crap shit. Earlier Margaret rang him to confirm the dinner and he hung up on her saying "I am busy, I don't have time to talk to you".

That's the problem when you get made redundant and you can't sit beside your friends anymore.S eng is probably glad to be well rid of us. Especially when we used to make him play the game "who would you like to bonk out of all your workmates". he turned purple and nearly choked, "we do not talk like that in my culture". "You Australians have such funny turn of expression."

He then dobbed to the boss that Margaret and I were a bad influence on him and that we made him stressed. That was fine until the boss wanted to knowwhat we did to upset Seng, and then the boss played the game too. Seng continued to go out to lunch with us each week (under sufference), but never answered the question, but I noticed he was very animated talking to a lady at the dinner who was also of Chinese descent!

Seng tried to tell me that there is no Chinese word equivalent to bonk. "It is not our culture". So I asked another workmate Ching Ho, the chinese word. He told me and explained how to pronounce it. I sat at my desk and said to Seng "Kon ke". He narrowed his eyes and said "how you know dat". Then I went''HA!", "you said there is no word for it". He said, "I dont know what you are talking about". Convenient, hey!

I am still thinking about doing a web site or web group with all previous newsletters. Will see how it goes.