Happy New Year! (because I don't think I'll be in any state to blog 2moro)

I'm pretty much all ready for my trip back to KL.

Sold my car yesterday, sold my aquarium (fish included), sold my office chair (currently sitting on crappy plastic stool), sold my sculptures (my dad then says that 'oh' he wanted one... oops too late pops, next time I make one it's yours), gave away all remaining living house plants (thanks to Mick for keeping the numbers nice and low hehe).

Yep, I think we're on course to depart on Wednesday night.... there were times where I wouldn't have thought so, but "touch wood", here we are.

Sydney weather has been uncharacteristically cool & pleasant for this time of year... i think it's teasing me, knowing what the weather is going to be like in KL.. it's clearly a last ditch effort to make me stay.

I haven't quite been able to catch up with everyone, the time of year not really helping as many are out of town. I'll be back in March, and won't have so much packing & selling to do then, so hopefully can get to mingle a little more.

listening to : Broken Social Scene - Anthems for a seventeen year-old girl

Parasite makes men dumb, women sexy

A common parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says.

About 40 per cent of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.

Human infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite, or accidentally ingest some of the parasite's eggs excreted by an infected cat.

The parasite is known to be dangerous to pregnant women as it can cause disability or abortion of the unborn child, and can also kill people whose immune systems are weakened.

Until recently it was thought to be an insignificant disease in healthy people, Sydney University of Technology infectious disease researcher Nicky Boulter said, but new research has revealed its mind-altering properties.

"Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women," Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine.

"Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.

"On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.

"In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens".

...from smh

Merry Xmas to all !


... some more excellent Calvin & Hobbs xmas cheer.

...have a happy and safe xmas and new year.

I've just returned from Xmas lunch with my sister and her family. Really nice, had a roast turkey lunch and homemade Xmas cake for dessert. I'm sporting my Xmas belly, must have that evening snooze I think.

I got to play a little with my nephew Evan, he's grown so much since I last saw him. 22 months old? yeh i think that is what my sister said...

Two sleeps till Sydney..

I'm leaving KL around 10:40pm Wednesday night, arriving in Sydney about 9:30am Thursday morning. Straight to bed methinx. I tend not to sleep on flights, and certainly not soundly, so I'm planning on feeling pretty wrecked when I arrive. Perhaps disorientated with all the familiarity?

It's been a while since it happened, but every now and then I've caught myself identifying a little piece of the environment, an entrance to a freeway here in Kuala Lumpur, for instance as being from near my home in Sydney. I have to shock myself back into reality that this simply cannot be the case. It's weird the little tricks the brain plays on itself. And why? To give me a taste of the familiar?

...So we don't freak out suddenly because we're so far from everything and everyone we care about? Is that why this hasn't happened to me for a while, because I have new cares here? Who know... perhaps who cares? Maybe because things here are starting to become familiar... I'm starting to slot in.

Being here has really made me look at so many things that I took for granted in a new light. Things are exciting here, because they're so chaotic... Sydney is organised and graceful by comparison.

I guess it's the familiarity of our expat nations that draws us together... It's that common sociological ideal that we cling to when things get a bit nuts.

Perhaps that same thing that keeps the foreigner in us.... The idea that when that market gets that bit too crowded, when the traffic that bit too noisy, or that meal just that bit too unidentifiable, that we crawl back to our safety blanket of memories all those in-flight movies away.

I'm not saying that it's particularly a good thing... it stops up from truly experiencing the wonderful alien environment that we find ourselves in... it stops up from truly embracing the friendly smiling people who wave to you from their cars and bikes (ironically perhaps because I am a foreigner?), and stops us from embracing another way of life that we really have so much to learn from and also so much to share with.

I am looking forward to getting home to everyone... I look forward collapsing into a heap for hours, then getting up and just staring off into the sky a bit more often than usual, but I'm definitely also looking forward to getting back over here and starting this adventure all over again.