How to fast-track a passport in less than 48 hours

The following words don’t come with any guarantee but I promise this will be your best possible chance of fast-tracking a passport. Sydney’s passport office offers an express service where you pay an emergency fee of $178 (burglary) on top of $282 (highway robbery) for the cost of a passport.  That’s pretty much the first $500 […]

A Travel Tip for Bali

The events of the last 24-hours have confirmed to me that I am an amateur/novice traveller. An amateur can further compound their limited knowledge/experience by travelling on Friday the 13th.  Don’t do that. Organising an extended family holiday to celebrate my father’s milestone 80th birthday has been about a year in the making.  Many ports […]

When Your Dog Gets Dementia

Getting old is inevitable and there’s little hope of getting through it unscathed.  Probably the worst affliction on the old is cognitive decline and it is not only a percentage of older humans who end up with dementia; I’ve recently come to understand that our canine friends can also be caught in the net. To […]

Alive and Well

Yes, it’s been a while. I’ve now finished uni for the year and it’s a great feeling.  I’m getting back into the routine I used to enjoy and it’s so good to have less pressure and more time. I found the last semester fairly demanding as it involved five subjects and two different campuses and […]

New Beginnings

‘Forgive me Father, it’s been eight weeks since my last post’. I never intended for there to be such a hiatus. It’s just that in January I found out my nursing qualifications have been binned.  I worked long and hard for my registration so I wasn’t happy.  It’s a long story but basically, my registration […]

Tarragon Honey Mustard

One of my favourite indulgences is a long hot shower.  I usually lean against the wall and let the water pelt onto my back while I clear my head and enjoy a few moments of solitude. Yesterday I was home-alone with just the little guy and I thought before hopping into the shower I would […]

Balmoral Burn, 2015

My motivation for entering the Balmoral Burn, (a 450mtr sprint up an increasingly steep incline), was that having just celebrated a birthday, I would be the youngest in my age category and therefore, if ever there was a time to enter with all odds stacked in my favour, this was it. The problem however, was […]

Tomato and Thyme Tart and…My Bio-Age

I’m reconsidering my relationship with Tiago.  It’s no longer exclusive because he’s now seeing Drew twice a week, Archie once a week and he even met with Arabella before she crippled herself once more. The tension between me and Tiago is not only because he’s now so busy it’s difficult for the two of us […]

Praline Meringue Torte

I’ve had my first date. With Tiablo, the Brazilian. I was running a couple of minutes late and he even sent me a text message making sure he wasn’t being stood-up. After the initial greeting we spent an hour in the downstairs part of the gym with all the bulky-blokes with rugby league sized thighs. […]

Vegan Crackers and…Mr Easy-On-The-Eye

That Alfie is involved in so many pursuits I’m being kept on my toes.  I need to stay fit, strong and energised.  Yesterday I dusted off my gym gear and paid a visit to my ‘charity’.  Having dropped Alfie off to early morning band practise (just another thing), I arrived at the time where the […]