I called this old lady up this afternoon wanting to interview her about this wonderful community project she was doing.

She's been collecting blankets, clothes and various items for homeless people as well as children in Africa and I thought it'd be a neat little story to feature in her local newspaper. So I made the call, wanting to find out a little more in order to write up a media release.

Within the first few minutes of the conversation, I found out that the local paper has actually already done a news article on her, which meant that the phone call pretty much should have ended then.

However, the dear old lady just kept talking and going on a whole variety of tangents. So much so that I've sure I've pretty much been introduced to all the Seventh-day Adventists in the greater Brisbane area, as well as gain more than enough insight into what she does, why she does it, how she does it, who helps her and everything else I did not really need to know.

But she was a lovely lady, and I didn't have the heart to be rude or hang up on her. Besides, there was no way I was going to get a word in anyway. She just kept talking and talking. It was amazing. I never knew a person could have that much to say to a total stranger on the phone.

She finally hung up 15 minutes later, but not without telling me, "God bless you my darling. I've been wanting to talk to someone today and you called. It's so nice to talk to you."

What can you say after that?

Incidents like the Melbourne shooting a couple of days ago make you wonder whether it's worth it to be a good Samaritan sometimes.

If the lawyer, Brendan, had gone about minding his own business when he saw a scuffle, he would probably be alive by now.

But the thing is, how do you walk on by? How can you pass a man obviously physically abusing a woman and pretend to ignore it?

Brendan did what any decent human being should have done, and tragically paid with his life.

And now they're hunting the shooter (who belongs to a bikie gang) and some politicians are calling for all bikie gangs to be outlawed.

I'll be the first to admit that I do feel a bit scared when I see a bunch of leather-clad, bearded man hanging around with their Harley-Davidsons, but honestly, how does it make sense for all bikie gangs to be outlawed simply because one of them happened to have killed someone in an incident that did not even have something to do with bikie gangs?

I mean, what if the shooter happened to be an accountant? Should we then call for all accountants to be outlawed?

What if the shooter was a, well, highly stressed policeman who was having a really bad day? Should we therefore remove the entire police force?

I'm not pro- or anti-bike gangs, but the logic of the recent argument baffles me.

It's tragic that Brendan died. I know that bikie gangs have a bad reputation.

But to push for one's personal agenda by jumping on a recent incident that is only slightly remotely related? That's just pushing it a bit too far.

This is really starting to annoy me.

I'd been using Yahoo! Briefcase to store my pdf files so that it acts somewhat like my online portfolio of all the articles that I've written and got published. In theory, this provides a URL for each pdf file, making it easy for me to share my documents with others.

Unfortunately, it's extremely temperamental at the best of times.

As exhibited in the last post, files may or may not be downloaded by others, depending on Yahoo!'s mood. The URLs are highly volatile, choosing to work at times, and not at others.

Does anybody know of any other free storage sites that I can upload my pdf files on to since Yahoo! is obviously doing such a terrible job?

Does this mean I'm famous?

Considering the magazine does have a limited number of audience, I think not.

Although, I did receive a call from the youth department in the Greater Sydney region asking if I would not mind giving a presentation about "Communicating to the iPod generation" to youth workers some time next month.

I shudder to think what pearls of wisdom I would actually have...

I've recently got to thinking about climate change and its impact on Christians.

I've personally had a burden for the environment since my teenage years, trying to support recycling, the reduction of energy consumption and the likes, as best as I could. I'm not talking tying one self to the tree kind of activities, but just simple things one can do to reduce one's impact on the world.

But is this a Christian response, or a personal response?

The reason why I wonder this is because there are many non-Christians out there who are doing wonderful things advocating for the environment.

And on the contrary, there are plenty of Christians whose lifestyles and habits reflect a lack of care and concern for the limited resources that are available to them.

Should not Christians be the better stewards for a world that was bestowed to them by God?

Or maybe it's because of a Christian belief that Jesus will return soon, the world will end and so we don't really need to worry about limited resources because by the time they run out we will all be in heaven?

I don't know. And it frustrates me.

It frustrates me because I don't know whether I'm a closet tree-hugger who happens to be Christian, or I'm just stuck in a climate of general apathy.

It frustrates me because not knowing means not knowing how best to communicate the need to care for our environment.

It frustrates me because I wonder if the little bit that I'm doing is actually going to make a difference when the rest of the world acts otherwise.

It frustrates me because I'm not sure if my actions are futile, meaningless or perhaps stupid.

And I guess it frustrates me because I don't feel that enough people care.

But should anyone?

This is so hilarious I actually found myself laughing out loud in my office.

There was once a backyard in the city. An ordinary backyard, grass, clothesline, a tree stump, the likes.

Then the owner of the house that was attached to the backyard started having dreams. He was after all a country boy trapped in the city.

First he started a small vegetable garden, growing peas, tomatoes and cucumber. Then he got more ambitious.

He spent many a night sawing, cutting and hammering away. One day, this appeared.

A few weeks later, tenants moved in.

They brought country-boy-who-was-trapped-in-the-city plenty of joy. A few months later, they brought country-boy-who-was-trapped-in-the-city plenty of eggs.

Even his girlfriend who was raised in the city and had only ever lived in the city started getting won over. "They are rather cute," she thought.

In the same backyard however, was a less than cute little Pomeranian that belonged to a housemate. It was harmless, but loved barking.

It did leave the chickens alone and was in fact just a tad afraid of the chickens, who were after all slightly bigger than him.

So they lived peacefully in the same backyard, largely ignoring each other.

Until country-boy-who-was-trapped-in-the-city had to go away for a convention, leaving his girlfriend to look after the chickens.

She braved it all. From changing the water to scooping chicken poop out of the food container, she braved it all. She was after all becoming rather attached to the chickens herself.

What she was not prepared for however, was an image that would leave her traumatised for the rest of her life.

When she was changing the water one day, said barking dog started sniffing a chicken rather closely. In fact, he simply followed the chickens wherever they went.

"Strange," she thought, but continued changing the water.

And that was when it happened. Said dog got on its hind legs behind the chicken and started trying to mate with it.

She was horrified. Images of chick-pups flashed before her as she yelled at the dog to get away.

The dog scurried off, but not without looking forlornly at the chickens.

When she returned the next day to let the chickens out of the cage, he started committing the unmentionable again.

She left the animals alone for the morning, and could only hope that nothing untoward happened to the chickens.

Today, however, she came across this that would perhaps save the chickens forever...

Carrot turns one tomorrow.

One year with her has made me like her even more. She's just such a fabulous car to drive and I think I want to grow old with her.

In all seriousness though, after one year on the road, I've come to realise one thing.

There are a lot of bullies on the road.

I'll be honest and admit that I'm kind of a stickler for the rules. I'm not a very confident driver and as such prefer to stick to the speed limit just so that firstly, I do not get booked and secondly, I simply believe it's safer for me.

The trouble with that though is that nobody else in the entire city of Sydney seems to drive at the speed limit.

Under normal circumstances, I'm left alone in the left lane to putt-putt up the road while everybody else overtakes me. However, when there is only one lane on the road, things get just a tad hairy.

Almost every time I'm driving in a one lane road and have a car behind me, it will invariably be right up my boot, which basically means if I were to brake suddenly, I will undoubtedly get rammed in from behind.

Why do people tailgate?

Tailgating does not make me go faster. It makes me more nervous, which means I've got a higher chance of getting into an accident, which will involve them since they're basically right there behind me.

But every time I have a car behind me that cannot overtake me, I get tailgated.

Whatever happened to following at a safe distance?

Whatever happened to respecting others?

Whatever happened to being safe?

Are we all really in that much of a hurry that 10 minutes make such a big difference?

It started with a baby boy (no, this is not a post about me being pregnant) who met a baby girl (this is also not a post about baby romance) while on holidays in the Sunshine Coast.

They played together, shared toys together and naturally, shared germs together.

Baby boy was sick the week before. Baby girl got sick that Sunday. So sick her birthday party that afternoon had to be canceled.

On Tuesday, baby girl's uncle got so sick, he was rushed to the emergency ward.

A week later, also on a Tuesday, baby girl's uncle's girlfriend also got sick. She was throwing up and suffering from major stomach cramps and at one point of time, her entire body got extremely tingly and numb.

She was also stripped of all energy, walking a few steps took her breath away. Naturally she was bedridden for one day and under "house arrest" the next.

That sickie was me.

If you were on a soap opera, you'd be a Hopeless Romantic

Flowers, love songs, poems, roses, heart-shaped chocolates? Sounds about right for a cute and caring sweetie like you. You're a passionate person who believes in following your heart, and you'd be right at home in the love-struck world of a soap.

An optimist, you tend to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. But just because you see the bright side of things doesn't mean you're a total pushover. It's just that you prefer to see the best in people, which is precisely why everyone loves you so much. Just watch your back. Not everyone on those soaps has such a good heart!

Is Your Life a Soap Opera?

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Looks like I'll have to watch out for Maya "Drama Queen"!

While waiting at the baggage carousel yesterday with David after a trip to Adelaide for the day for work, I started getting a little too engaged with NCIS showing on the TV right next to it.

I got somewhat distracted when I heard some muttering behind me. I turned around, in time to catch David retracting his hand from a handshake with someone. I looked at the man David was speaking to and as I did so, caught his eye.

Realising that I did not actually know him, I turned around and continued watching NCIS. The box we were waiting for came, and David and I walked away.

As I did so, David turns to me and asks, "Did you know whose hand I just shook?"

I shrugged, thinking it was some dude he met from before. After all, he did not look particularly interesting and was in fact, I thought, rather shaggy.

"That was Ricky Ponting."

I'm sure my boyfriend attempted to kill me while I was sleeping last night.

He came over in the evening to cook fifty litres of soup (ok, not quite, but it filled three big pots) for a work function he was going to have today.

So first he kept me up till close to midnight cooking the jolly soup, but when he went home, he left behind a time bomb.

I woke up this morning to the smell of something burnt in my apartment. Yes, the entire apartment had the fresh fragrance of burnt something.

"It can't be the soup," I thought. "I checked when Daniel was about to leave last night that all the switches were turned off."

But still the strange smell lingered. So I padded over to my kitchen and lo and behold, parts of the floor was covered in soup.

I looked at the murder weapon - he was cooking some soup in a slow cooker and set it on high, and it remained high until I turned it off in the morning, some eight hours later.

The soup had turned to mush (but miraculously not evaporated), there was soup all over my counter top, cupboard door and floor and the smell of burnt soup continued to waft through the air.

And I leave tonight with my murderer for the Gold Coast for five days. Oh dear.

New article published!

The Australian government's decision that the Aussie cricket team will not play Zimbabwe in their country because of Mugabe's dictatorship in the country is certainly commendable.

It's about time governments make decisions like this, to lean on countries to correct their human rights atrocities. Not simply to push their own agendas.

Fine, the Australian government probably has their own reasons for their decision, which is most likely to push their own agenda, but at least this time, it has the added effect of making a decision Amnesty International would be proud of.

Next up, Darfur.

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In light of Paris Hilton's sentencing to 45 days in jail, a free Paris Hilton petition has been set up.

Their reason?

She provides hope for young people all over the U.S. and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives.

What kind of hope?

What kind of beauty?

Excitement, well, depends on your definition of excitement I guess.

As Paul McDermott mentioned yesterday when I was at the ABC studios recording for The Sideshow, "to be fair, those who signed the petition thought they were signing up for a free DVD".

I went for my first yoga class in my life yesterday and it was rather good!

It felt like the entire hour consisted of stretching, balancing and breathing and I was wondering how in the world was this considered to be exercise. However, towards the end, my body was actually warm and I actually went home feeling like I had actually done some exercise.

The stretching exercises were really good though, particularly because the instructor kept telling us to relax our shoulders (mine are always tense from all this computer work I do). For some strange reason it actually felt like I just had a really good massage session.

Best of all, it seems to be a rather low impact kind of strengthening exercise for my spine, which hopefully will do wonders for this scoliosis problem of mine.

Couldn't help but be amazed by the number of different names they had for poses though - the star, the one, warrior one, warrior two, warrior three, the dolphin, the eagle, the pigeon, the duck...felt a bit like I was in the zoo...

I am so excited!

While 4wdriving and camping at Lithgow over the weekend (will post photos later), I was struck with an excellent (I think it is) idea for a book.

Not going to go into details, besides the fact that it's somewhat akin to a travel guide, but with a twist. And no, it's got nothing to do with 4wdriving besides the fact that the idea came up while I was sitting in the car waiting to be towed up this insane hill. And no again, I wasn't driving, Daniel was.

Now to actually find time to get my research done, write the book and pitch it to a publisher! All of which I've never done before, so fingers crossed everything goes smoothly!

I have nothing insightful to say today besides wondering how one can work effectively and comfortably in an office that is consistently set at 19 degrees Celsius.

I recently discovered the John Butler Trio and was really quite drawn to their unique blend of really quite funky music (I'm not a music critic, so I cannot tell you what kind of blend it is, besides the fact that it's a blend of dreadlocks, bongos, beards, and Rasta attitude).

It's rather fresh for me to have a listen to a mainstream music group that lacks the mainstream music style. In short, I liked it.

And in true hippie fashion, these guys are actually offering concert tickets that will offset the carbon emissions from travelling to go see them.

How cool is that?

I'm not sure if I'll go to the concert. I like them, but don't love them.