Jason Oakley : The life of an Aussie geek!

Over the last couple of weeks our company has started laying off people with redundancies. If you keep an eye on the news you will know which company it is. We aren’t exactly covert with reactions from staff.  Last Wednesday we were supposed to have a meeting to find out if we still had jobs but it was canceled at the last minute, so now it looks like we find out next week (the upcoming one).

Last Saturday I took Sienna to the Indooroopilly Shopping Centre. They had a Santa Parade so I wanted to surprise her with it.  We took the train there as I knew the car park would be packed. It turned out I was right because they also had Adam Gilchrist signing his new book.  Shortly after we arrived Santa, Mrs Clause, Frosty the Snowman, a reindeer and many fairies walking around and singing.  Sienna really enjoyed herself.

Sunday we went to the Chermside Water Park "Splash".  We spent about four hours there this time.  We only went on the big slide once as it was packed out, but got plenty of fun just swimming around again.  We left about 3:30pm and got home JUST before all the massive electric storms hit Brisbane.  We just got inside as it started sprinkling and shortly thereafter there was much lightening and thunder plus rain pouring down.  I decided to take Sienna home a bit later.

I’ve got Striker interested in the Tech Talk Radio show now. He listens every week after the Australian Top Gear show.  I ring him or SMS him to get online.  He enjoys talking to the presenters as well and gets to talk about iiNet. Apparently the CEO of iiNet listens to the show every week as well heh.

Thursday I took the day off as Sienna’s teacher wanted us in there for a parent/teacher interview about Sienna’s progress.  I met Rebecca there and we went in and had a nice chat. Sienna is doing really well and she sat on my knee while the teacher talked. 

After that I headed to my own doctor to get a better opinion about my chest pains and dizziness.  He said my heart is fine and it’s just chest pain from using a computer all the time.  The dizziness he says is probably Low Blood Sugar.  I already had this theory and started adding more sugar to my diet and feeling much better for it.  My doctor explained that since the body uses sugar primarily for energy and if I don’t eat enough sugar it will try to convert my muscles into sugar, which is not a very efficient method.

Today Sienna and I went to Video Ezy. She found two Pokemon movies and I got the new Nintendo Wii Wario Shake game.  I  actually quite like it. It’s still the standard old platformer, but has enough to differentiate it from your generic platformer.  You jump on the little guys to stun them, then pick them up and shake the hell out of the Wiimote to shake garlic out of them for energy. I guess Italians like lots of garlic hehe.  He also does some gymnastics where he jumps up and grabs a horizontal pole and swings around it like an Olympic gymnast.  Some of the levels are frustrating, but it’s still worthwhile. I don’t much like the submarine levels.

I downloaded some other free iPhone games. Jellycar (recommended by Leo Laporte on Macbreak Weekly) is a really fun physics game. Sienna loves watching me play it.

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VIEWED has won this year’s Melbourne Cup ahead Bauer of in a photo finish. C’est La Guerre ran third.

 

 I picked up Sienna Friday night after work. She wasn’t well and had been coughing so we had dinner and I gave her some Panadol.  She coughed for a while once she fell asleep, the poor thing.

Saturday morning we got up and I took her to swimming lessons.  Around 12:30pm I was searching around the internet for somewhere fun to take her when I came across the Chermside Water Park.  We got dressed in our swimmers and I put Sunscreen on both of us and off we went.  I didn’t tell her too much about it because I wanted it to be a surprised.  She was very excited, though.

We got there and I paid our entry fees. $10 for me and $5 for her to enable you to go on any of the slides as long as you want.  We swam around for a bit as she took it all in and then climbed the stairs up about 60 feet or so up to the top of the big slides.  We had a relatively short wait in line and then I sat on the slide and put her on my lap.  The lifesaver gave us the signal and we were off!  We slid to the bottom with a very excited Sienna.  We splashed down in the pool at the bottom and I pulled her up.  We went over to the other pools and she jumped in the deep parts.. her favourites.  She isn’t too fussed on the shallow water pools.  I took her to the island in the middle and she had me play dead and drowned.  She would swim to where I was floating on my back and grab me by the Tshirt I was wearing and drag me back to the island.  Then, she’d get me to do it again and again.  After that wore off she got on my back and I swam across to the side.  She paddled around there for a bit and tried out some kiddy slides, but even her lack of weight wasn’t enough to get her to slide due to only a small bit of water on the slide.  She had to push herself down the slide to move.

Around 1:30pm we got out and I grabbed some money from my locker and went to get some lunch.  Sienna was far too excited to eat lunch and paddled in a kiddy pool nearby where I could see her while I ate.  I got a burger and chips and lemonade – none of which she was interested in – and went to put the leftover money in my locker.  Instead of putting the containers on the ground I tried juggling the chip packet and money while opening the locker and tipped my chips cup upside down and they all fell to the ground.  I closed the locker and went back to buy more chips. ("Wanna chup, bro? Nah! I only eat plinktun!").  I drank the lemonade ("I’m parched as, bro!") and went back into the pools.  We played for a while longer then she wanted to go on the other big slide so we climbed the stairs again.  We slid down and swam again for about another 10 minutes and I decided it was time we went home.  We’d spent nearly two hours there and I’d paid for 2 hours for my locker anyway.  We collected our things and headed to the change rooms to dry off.  We drove back home and had a relaxing afternoon watching Pokemon movies.

On Sunday I drove to the Upper Mount Gravatt Garden City Westfield shopping centre.  I wanted to get a cheap pedestal fan for the lounge while I’m on the computer – to save using the air conditioner all the time.  We found a Crazy Clarks shop and the fan was only $12 so I was very pleased.  We also stopped at Toys R Us and I bought Sienna a Pikachu Pokemon battle launcher.  We came back home and watched some more Pokemon then played Super Smash Bros Brawl on the Nintendo Wii until it was time for her to go home again.