Friday morning

My dad used to like saying, ‘A wise old man once told me you can bet on the horses, but never bet on the way people will vote’.

So, although I’ve got a feeling in my bones and in my waters, I’m holding my cards close to my chest, and also sticking my head in the sand.

In the meantime, the mister is on the banks of the Limpopo River where I am sure it is not all powerpoints and spreadsheets. Another place he would never have guessed he was going to be.

We’ve got more clarity about our Abu Dhabi exit strategy now which has involved no small amount of angst and over-thinking. Well, the mister’s departure date is clear, although, because of reasons, I’m not exactly sure when I’ll be leaving Abu Dhabi for good. I’m still in Adelaide, and the mister tells me that he is telling people, ‘I won’t be surprised if tracy doesn’t come back to Abu Dhabi at all.’ Just in case I don’t. Which I will, but I can see why he might think that I won’t.

Monday morning

This morning I woke up and I was still an adult, and I still had decisions to make, and I still had the results of previous decisions to live with.

On the upside, my aunty has left me a glorious dressing gown in which to be an adult with decisions to make. Also, my tummy muscles still ache from laughing my way through a bloody brilliant Sunday afternoon looking through my grandfather’s slides with my cousins and their families.

Open wide

I would like to talk with you today about geriatric dental care*. Yes, I really would.

I know it seems a bit peripheral, but I have, in the last week or so, discovered that this is a serious issue. And not a little distressing for all concerned (no link, just take my word for it). I’d love it if you’d join me in writing to health ministers about maybe getting dental care and visiting dentists to aged care facilities and including dental care in the services available and accessible to our grandparents and great aunts and great great uncles and so on. There have been enquiries, so they should know what you’re talking about. But in the meantime, just thought I’d let you know in case, like me, it’s a useful thing to think about, but a think you haven’t given enough thought. If you know what I mean.

Actually, while we’re on it, we should have better dental facilities available more generally. I’ve been over on the Australian Dental Association website (yes, yes, I have), and in one of their latest press releases they say:

“As with all national schemes that have been introduced (and have invariably failed), such plans deliver limited care to all and allow those that can afford dental care to ‘top up’ their treatment to achieve long-term oral health. Those already adequately accessing care will get subsidised treatment and the rest will have to ‘just do’ with the basic band-aid solutions offered.”

And that last sentence pretty much sums up one of my great sadnesses about the state of Australian politics at the moment. There’s just too much of this kind of thing.

And there ends the sexiest blog post you are likely to read today.

*I’m sure there’s a better way of saying this, but I wanted to get your attention as well as avoid telling you too much of the specific situation in which I am intimately involved

Ramadan Kareem

Ramadan has started in the UAE. I’ve never fasted before, not in any serious sense, and I thought I might this year, but since I ended up coming back to Australia for the summer vacation the thought sort of got replaced. My religious views are a bit all over the place and follow no consistent line of thinking, but I would one day like to explore the ideas of fasting and silence a little more. Probably not at the same time, but maybe. One day.

If you’re interested, there’s a bit about the Moon Sighting Committee in this article. I’m quite taken with the idea of a Moon Sighting Committee and I do think that a world with a Moon Sighting Committee is a better world than a world without one.

Wishing my head had fallen off

Reading or listening to Phillip Adams makes my head asplode, and so, over the years, I’ve learned to avoid having my eyes or ears in the same place as his words. Makes our relationship quite amicable. But twice this week I’ve accidentally come into contact with him. Once, because I’d forgotten to never have the radio tuned to Radio National when Late Night Live is repeated and then again today, because he has a piece in The Australian somewhere in the papery bit and not in the magazine.

Why did I do it? Why did I read that piece? The first sentence was innocuous enough, “We’d planned ‘Rudd’s first interview since the coup’ for the previous week.” Okay, trademark namedropping right from the opening ‘we’, but anyhoo and moving on. To the second sentence then, “Kevin knew I’d totally opposed the coup and resigned from the ALP in protest…”

And that was it, the point where it would have been better if my head had fallen off, because it would have forced me to stop reading.

Now, I get that people are unhappy with the change of leadership and the way it came about and I can see why you might not like it. I get it, because I have been uncomfortable with the way the ALP organises its affairs for a very great number of years. It’s one of the reasons I am not a member of the ALP.

What I don’t get – or perhaps what I wish I didn’t get – is why this particular manoeuvre is the one that makes you buy out of the process.

LOL and OMG and I can’t believe I’m not there

If the mister had not had the idea to move to the UAE then this blog post would not exist. And if the internet did not exist then I bet you would never have seen what you are about to see.

But we did move to the UAE and there is an internet, and so, I am able to bring you, more or less live from the Date Festival, this gi-normous date:

From miscblogphotos

update: the mister apologises that he cannot provide photos from inside the date, but the date is only open in the evenings, and he is there in the afternoon. He has tasted prize-winning dates, date cake and coffee and reports they are all delicious.

(I agree, it is a bit undergraduate here at the moment, come back tomorrow and we will be our normal sophisticated selves)

I hope he’s wearing sunblock or he’ll end up a prune

So you know that I am in Australia enjoying the cool weather, but the mister is in Abu Dhabi writing proposals and going to meetings and looking at spreadsheets and so on. He tells me – by phone, not skype, because he can’t work it out, and how does an engineer not understand skype, like it was working dude, but anyway, and moving on – that it is very frigging hot. And humid. And he’s working hard.

But it’s not all hard work in his life you know.

No sirree. There be adventures.

For today, he and his friends are off to the

drumroll please

Festival of the Date.

Laugh? Fark, I nearly carked it.