introspective

Yesterday was Dad's Birthday

2011-10-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

My father passed away last year. I think there's a blog post about it somewhere. Anyway I realised yesterday that I actually miss my Dad - it seems weird considering at times my relationship with him wasn't the best (nowhere near as bad as the relationship with my mother though!). So I thought I'd get a little bit introspective and do a post about my Dad...

I have regrets - I have always tried to live my life with no regrets but I do have a few regrets in terms of my relationship with Dad. I should have tried harder - I really should. I think for most of my adult life I only ever spoke to Dad on father's day, his birthday and Christmas. The rest of the year I pretty much ignored him. Dad was a good man, he was, but he had a very large drinking problem which is partly what caused the estrangement between us. That and in some screwed up way I always thought I was never as good as my brother in his eyes. All I ever really wanted Dad to say was that he was proud of me - which a friend of his told us that at his funeral that Dad was incredibly proud of both us and would constantly talk about how well we were doing and so on (I suspect this applied more to my brother as Dad didn't have that many details of what I was up to...).

My relationship with Dad really did go sour because of his drinking. The man was a heavy alcoholic from the age of 16 and I suspect that I have my own issues with alcohol due to that. I don't know but I'm not going to blame him for it. My father meant no harm ever. He was a good soul but I think he was lost. He tried to do the best by everyone around him and that's what once in a while went pear-shaped. He was used and abused basically - people took advantage of his good nature and it was really sad to see it happen time and time again. Old dogs, new tricks...

The bad:
- getting phone-calls from whichever bar Dad was at to come pick him up.
- getting into a fight with him at the bar I worked at because I was cutting him off.
- Dad not remembering who I was after he had a rather nasty fall and ended up in Hospital. He was stuck a couple of years in the past, Edwin and I went to visit him and he absolutely no idea of who was (I had lost a considerable amount of weight by this point). That was heart-breaking for me (and I did hold it against him).
- ringing Dad for fathers day or his birthday after a massive weekend and blacking out due to lack of sleep and he was still on the other end of the phone talking like nothing had happened (this I am actually ashamed of!).
- Some of the general things of living with an alcoholic... I won't go into details but they tend not to be pleasant.

The good:
- One of the fondest memories I have of Dad is bringing me a cup of coffee every morning when I woke up (I started drinking coffee at 14).
- I came out to Dad when I was 19. I was so worked up and stressed over it. Dad looked at me and quite simply said "as long as you are happy" - I was stunned and a bit surprised that it was that simple.
- Dad buying me my first car and encouraging my interest in it. I still don't know my way around the engine of a car but I can make a car look pretty ;)
- Dad's generosity - he was quite simply the most generous and genuine man I think I've ever met.
- Dad actively encouraged my interests - including cooking. He hated me being in the kitchen though as the kitchen normally turned into a massive mess! But he was generally kind enough to clean up after me.
- Dad allowing me to hold my High School Formal after-party at home. Almost 100 drunken teenagers! The man deserved a medal for that one! And we only had the police come past once.

The regrets:
- Not seeing Dad before he died. I moved down to Melbourne in 2003 and I didn't go back to Brisbane until Dad's funeral last year.
- That Dad didn't get to meet the girls. I tried explaining to Dad that Larry and I were starting a family (or attempting to at that stage). And it's the only time Dad ever hung up on me with a very curt "I have to go."
- Dad not being there at our Wedding (but there was a very good reason for that too!). If Dad would have been a bit more healthy mentally then it wouldn't have been a problem - but I'm not sure if Dad could have handled the concept of his youngest son getting married to another man.

My father in a lot of ways was a very admirable man and I do have a lot of respect for him. He was born in 1940 during the War and in a lot of ways he was your typical European male. Didn't show much affection to his kids (he loved us deeply though - I think Edwin and I both knew that). I don't think he was ever expecting that he would be raising two children by himself. Virtually unheard of in the 1980s. But I think he did ok. I'm not a complete screw-up... I've done ok for myself. I've got a good education, stayed out of prison, I have a stable relationship and I have two amazing children. I wouldn't be the person I am without my father. I may not have always liked him but I do love him. I have a much deeper respect for him now that I am a parent myself - I understand more of where he was coming from and the sacrifices he made.

It's also funny a flickr contact of mine a couple of months ago posted a self-portrait of himself in the mirror and asked who do you see when you look in the mirror. I see my father... as I have gotten older I look more and more like my Dad. Not completely obviously as there were two people involved in making me. But the resemblance is there. Once upon a time I used to think I took more after my mother in terms of my looks but that was based purely on memory. I can now see how people think I look like Dad...

I do love him and I do miss him. And I do only hope that I can be as a good a person as he was.

so we moved back to the city...

2011-09-25T21:03:00.000-07:00

Ok getting back on track with all this....

Your father found a job - huzzah!!!! Took a lot of financial pressure of... A LOT! But it added a whole series of new pressures. To get to work he'd be getting up at 6am to try to get out the door at 7 to catch a train at 7:30 from Woodend. I'd then be keeping you guys up until around 7:30 so he could spend 10 minutes with you before I put you to bed. This was actually hard on both of us. Your father didn't get to see you. And I felt more and more isolated and alone. So I felt particularly stressed... as did he. And I was a fair monster to be around during this period too (I will admit to that...).

So unbeknownst to me... your father had seen a house and went had a look at it. And then suggested that on Boxing Day 2009 that we all go look at it as "something to do" so we came had a look and I will be honest I fell in love with the house. There was a rather large stumbling block. It was pricey... (still is!) so we would become quite familiar with the term mortgage stress - which we have. We weren't sure if we could afford it, we weren't sure if we could get a mortgage but we put in an offer all the same - 10 month settlement, rent-back for the 10 months. And surprisingly the vendor accepted! We had a new house, in a location that we loved and a brand-spanking new townhouse. Next part was selling the other two houses and moving back into the city.

So on March 19, 2010 we moved back to South Melbourne. Well we did... it's your first house in the area. It's funny going from a town of under 1000 people back to the inner-city I instantly felt more comfortable. Anonymity has a lot going for it. I think it's much easier to be someone faceless in a larger population. In part and as friendly as the folks in Trentham are - I did feel a little bit like a freakshow. Here it's not that much of a problem, we're much more readily accepted, people generally don't blink at two men with kids.

Also it suddenly became easier for friends to drop around and visit. Granted we're just around the corner for most of them now, than being a 3 hour round trip. So that did and has had made life much more comfortable. Although the flip-side of that now is that we've made it much harder for our dear friends Chris & Ian to visit us - they now face a 3 hour return trip (as do we when we go visit them!).

I miss the garden at times though and I know your father does too. But we've discussed that as well. This was a decision we made (not particularly lightly) for our family. It's easier having one property at the moment rather than having two and the expense of two. And at this stage in your lives we can't ferry you up and back every weekend and then spend the whole weekend in the garden. That's not fair on you!

I also find that raising kids in the city is generally a bit easier. There's more things to do. Swimming lessons (a bit of a failure), gymbaroo (the woman who ran it was an absolute nutjob), there's your music classes that you, me and your father absolutely adore. Everything is so much more convenient. I suspect as you get a bit bigger we'll miss having a backyard for you guys to run around in though. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it - on the plus side there's a few parks you can and do terrorise.

It's also funny the sale of the houses in Trentham and Port Melbourne were relatively stress-free for me. Every other time your father and I have sold a house, I've been a right emotional wreck... not sure why. But this time around it was actually very easy and it was all done with perfect ease for me - I even took control of most of it (which is quite unusual for me!). And in a slight brag moment I had a couple of my photos used for the marketing of the property in Trentham, it was one of those moments where I felt like a real photographer (they are few and far between these days).

For the most part we settled back into city living very easily. Everything was suddenly (again) so convenient. We could walk to the supermarket - rather than having to drive 20 minutes... we didn't need to jump into the car to go everywhere! It was brilliant and something I really quite honestly missed.

As a parent I still had my ups and downs and I was still struggling with dealing with two infants and my own issues. We had a couple of scary moments which were mostly resolved by getting a nanny in to help me for two days a week (I'll touch on that in my next blog post).

I do miss the country. I miss the peace and quiet. I miss the beautiful surroundings. I miss the fantastic roads I used to take the Mini out on (there's some absolutely brilliant roads between Trentham, Kyneton & Daylesford). But I do think we made the best decision. We're happy here - it's a beautiful house, we've got good neighbours. There's a bit of a sense of community - which is always wonderful.

A note on the photo - this is a photo I took last year at the front of the house. The developer planted a variety of Jacaranda in two of the townhouses and as I was doing a 365 project at the time... this is what I came up with for that particular day. It's probably the best macro photo I have ever taken.

a response to "Double trouble or twice blessed? "

2011-09-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

I was reading Melbourne's Child which had a feature on Homophobia in Schools and I was looking for the article on their website and I couldn't find it. Instead I stumbled across this article which was about raising twins. Now I realise it's only this woman's opinion and I actually found myself mostly disagreeing with it...

As a mum of three-year-old twins (almost), I'm often asked, "How do you cope with two?" My honest answer is neither straightforward nor simple, and I all but have a mild panic attack, gasping for breath, the minute I meet a prospective mother who believes that having two at once is the perfect instant family.

I get asked the same question a lot as well - how do you do it? How do you cope? My answer is different - I don't know any different. All of my experiences are wrapped around having twins. Yes it's hard, but I also suspect having one child is hard.

But I guess the bit that really surprised me in the article was this:
Those early days before that were filled with scrubbing bottles, changing a dozen nappies a day, waking one baby to feed when the other one cried out in the night and getting our babies in a routine as early as possible. It sounds harsh but it was about survival and functioning. I never read for hours a day to my inquisitive wide-eyed babies, nor did I rock them to sleep or spend hours gazing into their eyes humming lullabies. I just didn't have the time and yes, I feel guilty about this too.

Now I have twins - they're almost two years old. I've spent hours reading to them, I've scrubbed bottles, I've changed more nappies than I ever care to remember. I've rocked them to sleep, and I still occasionally do. I don't feel guilty that I didn't have much time to spend doing the things that parents of singletons do... but that's because I made the decision that my children came first. The house could (and still every now and then does) look like an absolute bombzone but I was going to get down on the ground and interact with my children, I was going to play with them, read to them, wrestle with them.

The one bit I will agree with and I think any parent with twins will tell you this - ROUTINE IS KEY! Get them into a routine as soon as possible and stick to it. Babies respond surprisingly well to order and it does help keep you sane...

Some of my happiest moments have been when one of the girls has fallen asleep in my arms. Or there's the other bit which is the absolute delight on my day - getting tandem cuddles on the couch watching TV - to my mind life doesn't get much better than that. And I get double the cuddles :)

I think that's maybe the difference. I wasn't afraid to let other things slide. Hell I shower at night because it gives me more time to spend with the girls and I try to do everything that I didn't do during the day while they are down for their nap.

Twins really are a blessing. This I think becomes more apparent as they get older. They are more socialised, more confident in social situations and they have each other!

I was very lucky that Larry was around for the first 6 months so we didn't have as many dramas in the first 6 months or so. But it was still hard... now it's no so much hard - it's just a different set of challenges.

It hasn't all be rosy. I have broken down and lost the plot. I have been in absolute tears due to the frustration and the anxiety. But I am also blessed with two incredibly amazing children. They are happy and healthy - I think that's all anyone can ever ask for.

As a random stranger at the supermarket said me to a while ago - double the trouble, three times the fun. And you know what - he was right. I wouldn't change having twins for anything. I love my children, I love my family and I think it's just right as it is :)

Link to the article here -> http://www.webchild.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3852:double-trouble-or-twice-blessed&catid=19:stories&Itemid=185

2 years ago my life changed...

2011-09-15T17:21:00.000-07:00

This is in part the first change to my life... the major change obviously was the girls being born but there was something that happened before then. I used to be employed once upon a time... 2 years ago I was made redundant - my employer gave me a nice big cheque to go away. Not something I was going to argue with - really it wasn't. It was one of the funniest moments of my career I think. I went from a job I absolutely despised to a job I enjoyed with an amazing group of people. I used to work on an application support helpdesk and went into a UAT job on a secondment that was made permanent which was then the role that was made redundant. My entire team got called into a meeting at head office to be informed that our team was being let go... I rang Larry to let him know and he said to basically take it. I was due to go on parental leave two weeks later anyway. SOOOOOOOOOOOOO I eventually get into the meeting with the HR officer and my National Manager and I'm asking to see the package. "No - think about it, talk to your partner and see what your decision is." My response - "I've already spoken to him and he's happy with my decision." They insisted that I take 24 hours to think about it and call them in the morning and let them know what my decision was. This really was a no-brainer. Give me a big fat pay-out to leave my employer... duh! Although I did have to quietly (internally) chuckle at how uncomfortable my National Manager was with the concept of a gay employee talking about how soon his children were due to be born. My former employer did very fair by me I have to say - they did pay out the parental leave that I would have taken had I remained with them as it was booked... I really did honestly want to go "SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!" during the whole meeting. But I knew I really couldn't!

Mind you this was really the point behind this post. It's just a part of what's been on my mind. I'm starting to find myself in a situation where I am starting to think what's going to happen when I do go back to work. Admittedly it won't be for a while yet as to be honest - my wages wouldn't cover full-time childcare costs (we get nothing back from the Australian Government - I'm not complaining btw!) so I get the joy of staying home and raising the girls until they start school. But that does introduce the dilemma of what am I go to do? What's going to happen to my marketability in the workplace? What can I do to find a job? I know these are questions that women who drop out of the workforce to raise children face. And I am a little bit worried about how do I explain that to a potential employer? Am I likely to face discrimination because I'm a male care-giver who's taken time out of his career to raise children or has the world moved on to a point where that doesn't matter anymore? So many questions...

I'm worried about it yes and I'm sure at some point I will find an answer... but up until then I think I will just continue enjoying raising my children :)

depression and parenting

2011-08-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

I was going to do a very long-winded blog post about suffering depression and being a parent. I deleted it. It's funny - I don't feel comfortable sharing that much but it did get me thinking - there's so much research on post-partum depression for women but there's not much done on men suffering from post-partum depression. Maybe it's the general societal stigma attached to men suffering depression... I don't know.

"On average the studies showed, 10.4 percent of new fathers became depressed during the gestational or postpartum period. In the subset of studies that looked at paternal well-being three to six months after the baby was born, 25.6 percent of fathers were depressed."

I guess also from my own perspective I'm in a bit of a unique situation. Maybe not unique. Maybe uncommon is more correct. I know there is a rise in stay-at-home Dads worldwide - economic realities being what they are...

But for me:

- I had lost my financial independence for the first time in my adult life. I was completely and absolutely reliant on someone else to survive. And that took some coping.

- I lost my sense of self-identity. I stopped being Michael and I had become Louise & Olivia's Dad (or Mummy as some people have said).

- I battled with my new role as a parent (I will admit I do have more of a maternal role in this family)

- I had gained a substantial amount of weight and I hated myself for it (I've had body issues most of my life!)

- I felt isolated, I felt very much alone. And that was probably the hardest part of it all. There wasn't really anyone I could turn to and I felt that I had to be strong for the girls. There were moments where I did physically break down and cry because it was all just too much.

- I felt I was never going to bond with the girls. From having spoken to a few other parents (even mothers) they've felt the same way.

There are still elements of the above that I battle with but I suspect it's going to be that way for a long time! But I have strategies to deal with them. And I guess that's probably the main thing especially for men. Know that you are and get help - it doesn't make you any less manly (I don't think so at any rate) especially when there are other lives at stake.

I will say this much though. When I bonded with the girls - I bonded. Those two beautiful little girls are mine and I will do anything for them. I guess it's what unconditional love is.

And so now the real fun begins...

2011-08-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

I don't think anything can really ever prepare anyone for being a parent... People will tell you until their blue in the face that it's hard. And I don't think until you are in the midst of it - you don't actually realise how hard it is. The sleep deprivation, the constant cycling of feeding, changing etc... It's bloody hard! I think also being a man and trying to come to terms with all this psychologically is very hard.

There's probably tomes I could write on this and one day I may... as a friend suggested I should title it How to Raise Children with Style, Grace and a Sense of Humour. Looking back at it now - I think having a sense of humour when raising children is probably the most important thing.

Larry and I never really fought. The girls were born and home and all of a sudden we were fighting almost every day. Part of it was probably the lack of sleep, the stress of dealing with twin infants, the stress of dealing with Larry trying to find a job, feeling isolated in the country. The people who promised us they'd help never really came through (I'll touch on this later too).

At this point in time it's very easy to look back and say we were very lucky. Which we were. The girls weren't sick - they had no major health complications (which for premature babies is a very good thing!). They both gained weight at the correct rate (Olivia a bit slower but she was getting there gradually... funny thing is she still won't really eat!).

So we fought and fought and fought - generally over really stupid small inconsequential things, like tracking how much the girls were eating at each feed. Why dinner was always so late (we were eating at about 9pm), the lack of sex, the amount of time Larry was spending in the garden. I will also admit I was stressed about the impending visit of my mother (which I pulled the pin on as I couldn't cope with the idea, and I honestly think if my mother and I would have been under the same roof - it would have been a complete disaster [gay men and their mothers!]). Pretty much the usual things that parents fight over.

But at the time it did just feel very hard. And I guess on the plus side we got through it!

the trip home and sundry India...

2011-08-05T05:33:00.001-07:00

India is a weird place. Not in a bad way. I found it very warm, friendly and spiritual but we were also very much in a middle-class enclave which does come with a fair degree of security and comfort. There was a couple of funny moments. There's a couple of gift shops in the lobby of the Ramada Powaii (like most hotels worldwide) and because we have to vacate the room once a day for the cleaners to come through and do their thing we'd hang out in the lobby or the games room (they had a Wii... lesson learnt I'm crap at games!). So one of the things I found a bit weird. Babies in India are generally not taken out in public until they are 40 days old (from my understanding) and here we are with twins that are 2-3 weeks old. So we're talking to the folks in the gift shops - and they asked how old the girls were and we told them - the looks on their faces were a bit shocked! But I think being foreigners you're forgiven slight irregularities to custom...

So... the shenanigans of the trip home!
I would like to say this was easy. I would like to say something for once in India was easy. It wasn't. Far from it. So it's the 22nd of October - we get notification that the girls emergency passports and citizenship certificates are ready (you're now little Aussies - very little Aussies!). So we start the process of getting the Indian exit visas. Now of course the office to get your exit visas is located somewhere in Mumbai that if we didn't have a good driver (a few other couples had used him previously) who knew where he was going - we would have had no hope! It was in the back of Mumbai somewhere with no street signs. So anyway we find it - get our ticket/appointment etc... start the process, pay for the visas and asked to return a couple of hours later for the exit visas.

I'll backtrack for a second as this is where the real fun is. So we received your passports and citizenship certificates via courier to the hotel that morning. Something was missing though. Namely your fathers passport... as far as we could tell his passport had been sent somewhere else in Mumbai. Cue the appropriate panic from me as all of a sudden I could imagine me flying home solo with the two of you while your father was stranded in Mumbai trying to find his passport that was somewhere between Mumbai and Delhi... as per usual I needed have worried as it was delivered to our hotel later that day.

So we had a couple of hours to kill while we waited for your exit visas to be processed. So we went off the Taj Hotel in Mumbai for lunch. It was a very nice lunch - including the appropriate me ducking into the men's room to do nappy changes. It was a bit sad to see there were still parts of the Taj Hotel that had been boarded up from the terrorist bombings (that made me a bit nervous about actually being in Mumbai).

So we got your exit visas and were pretty much all set to go - barring any other disasters... delayed flights etc. But again not something we needed to have worried about. Our flight from Mumbai to Singapore left on time. No major hassles or glitches. The stewardesses on Kingfisher were all wonderful and very curious about the two of you! They were more than happy to help us - which is always a nice touch. As per usual you were both an absolute joy on the plane - but hey you were three weeks old... you didn't do much beyond sleep, eat and do what babies do!

So we change planes at Singapore. Went from Kingfisher to Singapore Airlines. We requested the bassinets but missed out on them and then we ended up with Aisle seats and you guys would have to flown home in our laps... I'm not sure if that would have worked for anyone. But the customer service manager was lovely. She had 5 babies on the flight and asked people to move so she could free up some seats so that your Dad and I could sit together and have a seat between us for the two of you. As we had your little carry cots - we used that on the seat between us for the two of you and it worked perfectly. Again you were both absolutely brilliant on the way to Melbourne.

A funny aside. We were going through security in Singapore to get on the plane. And the security guard saw that I was carrying one of you. "Oh a baby..." - she grabbed the cocoon and off she went. She sees your Dad come up with the other cocoon "and another baby..." and grabbed the cocoon and off she went again. I thought it was a rather cute moment. Then all the female security guards were clustered around the cocoons ohhing and ahhing (you had that effect on people).

So we get back to Melbourne International after the 9 hour flight from Singapore. Get through customs (took longer than we would have liked). Then we had the joy of trying to work out how to get you guys into your baby seats in the car. We'd never done it before. So um... yeah... we got there in the end.

And now one of my first parenting mistakes. We were living in Trentham so probably just over an hour from the airport. And I thought I had enough time to get you guys home before you were due your next feed. I was wrong... So we had to pull over at a service station and get some water to make up your formula. You were both howling by this point. All they had was cold water... ice cold water. It was a struggle for everyone. You guys were hungry and you were trying to feed but you ended up in pain because the water was that cold! It was a mistake and a lesson.

So we got home and you guys had your first night in your cots. Your father and I were exhausted... it had been a very long three weeks.

I want to get married in NYC

2011-07-26T14:10:00.000-07:00

Ok so during this week I discovered that I can not get married in NYC. This particularly offends me for a number of reasons. I know I'm not a US Citizen, or even a US resident (that's a different issue and fight all together and I'm hoping that DOMA does get repealed so that I can live in the US with my family).

Now Australian same-sex couples have de-facto rights. So Larry and I have the same rights as a heterosexual couple that's aren't married but living together (property, inheritance etc). Now this is where it gets funky. If I was to apply for a marriage licence in the state of New York - I can't get married - the Australian Government would deny me a Certificate of No Impediment to Marriage. Because the Australian Government views marriage as being between a man and a woman. Now the problem here becomes, if we were to move to NY and we were denied the ability to get married - I'd not be able to access the state rights that NY has extended to same-sex couples. It's a mess.

So rather than do nothing as I would normally do. I've emailed my Federal Member in the House of Representatives. I expect nothing to come of this (apart from a polite form letter which will say nothing) - but for once in my life I feel like I have to do something...

My email:

Dear Mr Danby,

I reside in South Melbourne with my partner Larry and our twin daughters Olivia & Louise. Larry and the girls are both dual American-Australian citizens and we as a family are looking at relocating to the United States in the near future.

Now as you may know the State of New York has allowed same sex couples to marry. We were looking at getting married and residing in New York, mostly as we would be granted state benefits by the State of New York and it would be easier for Larry and myself to locate work in New York City.

I have since found out that we can not in fact get married in the State of New York as the Australian Federal Government will not grant us a Certificate of No Impediment to Marry. Now the Prime Minister has come out saying that she's proud of her government's track record on same-sex rights but the real problem as I see it for any Australian citizen who wishes to marry in New York - we are then denied the state rights that New York has for same-sex couples. So effectively we'd be back to square one in terms of our rights, as I would not have any rights in New York as I would not be officially recognised as Larry's partner or the girls' parent.

I'm requesting your help on my own behalf to have this matter investigated and if possible to have a Certificate of No Impediment to Marry issued.

Thank you for your time - I honestly appreciate it.

Regards,

Michael Verhoef

I had my parenting orders granted

2011-05-13T21:43:00.000-07:00

The folks who follow me and Larry on facebook already know about this... but this is here now for the girls (and it's a much more detailed explanation).

I didn't even realise that yesterday was Black Friday. As they say lucky for some - unlucky for others. I guess for me it was a lucky day!

I had my parenting orders granted by the Family Court (a Federal Court in Australia). In March this year Larry and I engaged a law firm to seek parenting orders that would in effect recognise me in the eyes of the law as the girls other parent. In very basic terms - it's like I've adopted the girls as my own children, except that we can't adopt here and also I think it's highly unusual for the children of one partner to be adopted by the other partner, even in heterosexual relationships. I could be wrong on this but of course I've never looked into it this side of it.

So a parenting order basically means that I have the ability to sign forms, authorise medical treatment and do everything that I need to do for the girls as a parent. That most parents tend to take for granted. All because I don't appear on the birth certificate. I think we're the second couple that has children through surrogacy in India to go through this. Yay, we're groundbreaking again...

For me this was probably more important than Larry as it gives me piece of mind that my authority as a parent cant be questioned and I have legitimacy as the girls father. It was an interesting process. About two months of working with the lawyers to get the paperwork together. The court appearance yesterday which was fun. It was interesting to hear the judge talk about sperm... but anyway! It was a reasonably short hearing - about 15 minutes in total and the judge was pretty cool. I was slightly nervous that there was going to be something that prevented the orders being granted which I know was foolish as it's a pretty straight-forward matter but there was just the concern that something... something... could go wrong. So the first thing she said was that she was going to put everyone out of their misery and that the orders were granted. I officially become the girls Daddy and I honestly can't tell you how that makes me feel - I teared up, so I'm basically this emotional wreck sitting behind the lawyer trying to not make it sound like I'm crying (my lawyer even admitted that she got a bit emotional about it all).

Larry had insisted that we include a family photo with the affidavit to make it all a bit more personal. And the last thing the judge said to was to go home and enjoy those beautiful daughters of ours! It was an amazing moment.

Peace,

Michael xo

and the next 3 weeks...

2011-04-21T21:01:00.000-07:00

So while Olivia was still in NICU - your Dad and I took turns in visiting Olivia, while one of us stayed at the Hotel to look after Louise.

We met some really nice people while we were dealing with the hospital. There were some heartbreaking stories though - mostly of people who couldn't get their visas sorted out in time so their babies had been in NICU or the hospital for weeks on end. That was a bit sad :(

To the readers of my blog if you are ever in Mumbai - the Ramada Powaii is a very good hotel, a lot of gay dads have ended up staying there, the staff is fantastic, the rooms are clean and modern.

We had some comedies getting too and from the Hospital to the Hotel though. I usually let Larry speak when when we are overseas in Asia as people generally understand an American accent better than they do an Australian accent.

Anyway, there's a part of Mumbai called Lamada (or it sounds a lot like Ramada) so we'd end up in a completely different part of Mumbai to where the hotel was. And then of course you are trying to explain where you should be to someone who speaks Hindi and not English. It took us a while to smarten up to the idea of getting the hotel to write the name and address of the hotel in Hindi on the back of one of their cards.
Then there's what I describe as our Bollywood moment. We were coming back to the hotel in an air-conditioned car and there's a traffic jam about a block away from the hotel. The driver asks us if he minds if he gets out as he's seen a Bollywood actor on the corner (the reason for the traffic jam) - he comes back thanks so much and he's beaming like a little boy on Christmas morning. He got to shake the actors hand.
Then there's just the general trying to ferry two babies in an autorickshaw or a cab without baby seats. You just go with the flow.

So we basically spent the 3 weeks in the hotel watching 5 english language channels, basically a lot of really bad movies... and dealing with the fact that all of a sudden we were responsible for these two very, very tiny people. Incredibly, beautiful but incredibly tiny... I think we were both staggered by how small you were. We would go down for breakfast in turns (I miss the breakfasts... I love Asia for the fact that most breakfasts tend to be savoury!) and we all go down for lunch (we had to vacate the room to allow the cleaners to come in). We got bored - a lot... we would also try to sleep when we could. You guys were getting fed every 2 hours.

So we'd be doing nappy changes, boiling water, cleaning bottles in a bucket, hanging out with you two on the bed, attempted bathing you (that was not a lot a fun! you two hated baths! this has been a recurring issue but we're having fun with it now!!! to the point where Olivia keeps trying to flood the bathroom and I have to strip down to my undies or get absolutely soaked).

It took roughly a week to get your birth certificate and then another week to finalise all the paperwork with the Australian Consulate to get your emergency passports so we could come home.

Before I get onto the trip home - I thought we went through an amazing experience. We were in Mumbai for Diwali (the festival of lights) and it was amazing. The hotel invited all the guests onto the rooftop of the conference centre for their Diwali celebrations and it was a hoot! I loved it - apart from when one of the fireworks didn't light properly and pretty much exploded. We thought it was then best to leave - IN A HURRY! ;)

I was trying to upload a photo to go with the Diwali portion of this but blogger is hating me at the moment... so here's the photo -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/nettsu/4020639217/ - it's my favourite from the night :)

i had a nice moment today...

2011-02-09T20:38:00.000-08:00

it's weird but funny.

The background:

One of the dogs is blind (poor thing!). Miniature poodles have a genetic predisposition to going blind apparently and Penny unfortunately has gone blind. So anyway we see an eye specialist for Penny about every 6 months.

One of the doctors rang me today. She knows that we have the girls and that we had the girls through a surrogate. Her sister-in-law has friends who are quite keen to become Dads (through surrogacy) and they wanted to speak someone who has gone through the process so Chloe (the eye specialist) rang me to ask if that was ok - as in would I be happy to speak to them. Mostly and did this give me a bit of a giggle (but I can relate) they want to know what it's like raising girls as they are a little bit clueless, which to be honest we were too :)

But this made me feel a little warm & fuzzy!

and here we were...

2011-01-23T19:23:00.000-08:00

We moved from the house in Port Melbourne to the house in Trentham. That was planned. The intent was that we thought it would be nicer for you guys to grow up in the country (I'll revisit in this in a later post) and it seemed like we were going to have more support in the country than what we were going to have in Melbourne. It was a beautiful house and it is such a beautiful part of Australia. Your father still misses it.

We were both unemployed. This was the strange/funny/weird thing. I had planned to take a year or two off work to raise you guys before you went into childcare. The week after your father and I moved to the country I was made redundant. Your dad has some short-term contracting gigs but nothing permanent (this was both a good thing and a bad thing).

So on a Friday evening your father and I were just sitting around at home watching TV and we get a phonecall congratulating us on the birth of our twin daughters. You guys had arrived, early! 5 weeks early!

Twins generally arrive early - we knew that and we were originally planning on getting to India two weeks before we thought you would be born. And so started the frantic phonecalls to see if we could get on the next available Qantas flight to get to Mumbai. No... the next available flight was the 3rd of October which would have gotten us to Mumbai on the 5th. That to me wasn't acceptable. We felt bad enough that we had missed your birth. So a couple of more phonecalls and we were on a 12am flight to Singapore to then catch a Kingfisher flight to Mumbai. We arrived in India on the 3rd of October and went straight to the hospital.

Now the general process for surrogate births is that you are meant to check into the hospital and stay there until the babies are discharged. So your father was on the bed and I was on a fold-out couch... so, so very uncomfortable. You were both in NICU because you were such small, fragile things. You were tiny!

Ok let me backtrack for a second...

We spent the flight over finalising names (as we knew had two girls now). So that was easily done and as soon as we saw you both we knew your names fit. We were happy with that.

So back to the hospital...

Louise is the elder out of the two of you by a whole minute! She was 1.96kgs at birth. Olivia you were so very small - you were only 1.36kgs. We were constantly worried we were going to break you both!

You were both in the NICU and we weren't getting a clear answer as to how long you were likely to be there for - could have been up to 2 weeks and we weren't quite prepared to stay there for 2 weeks. So we went and checked into the Ramada in Powai... and then made the trip twice a day to the hospital until Louise was released from NICU - 3 days later. Olivia was in NICU for another couple of days....

it's funny i was selecting the two photos for this post and i was in tears remembering just how small the girls were... almost 16 months later and it seems so very hard to believe they were in fact this small!

so the next couple of months...

2010-12-23T01:30:00.001-08:00

it all passed in a bit of a blur...

We were excited that we were pregnant (well technically our surrogate was!). We knew it was twins. Which was funny in a way. We didn't know what to expect we were excited that it was twins as we thought it would be good that you would both have someone to play with as you grew up (more on that later!).

We were getting the updates from the clinic which were all good. You were both growing very well, our surrogate was gaining weight as she should have been etc...

I was a little bit worried deep down as we had lost the original set of twins. But we got past week 15. And then past week 20. We got the week 20 scans, which included the 4D scans which showed us you both for the first time. It was an amazing thing to see. Your little faces in utero. Your father then went on a frenzy to find out your genders. Indian law doesn't allow for the disclosure of genders when a woman is pregnant (namely as female embryos were being aborted). We found out that one of you was a girl and the other was indeterminable. I had the feeling you were both girls. I don't know why but I did...

Also your father was funny. He decided that he had to know what gender you both were so he made video of the DVD that we were sent from the Clinic to see if some of his friends and some of the people he went to school with could shed any light on "what" you were... It was funny to watch at any rate ;)

http://www.youtube.com/user/lroadcap#p/u/4/SJEZUr7vZBs

So all was proceeding along nicely. Your surrogate was gaining weight and was healthy. We were starting to plan for your arrival. We were talking about moving from Melbourne to move to a small town called Trentham (which we ended up doing). And your father and I would start commuting in for work (about a 90 minute round trip - not a lot of fun! Your Dad was ok with it but I hated it).

Anyway... we had one rather amusing hiccough. We were at 29 weeks and we got a phonecall from the clinic telling us that our surrogate had gone into labour. I get a phonecall from your father while I am on the tram home - cue 10 minutes of absolutely frenzy while I try to get a hold of the person who was going to be housesitting for us to see if he could start that day or the next. Your father was on the phone to Qantas to see if we could get a much earlier flight. Thankfully, your father had a 1 year visa and I had already renewed my tourist visa. I then get a phonecall about 10 minutes later telling me that they got surrogates confused. There was another surrogate with the same name who had gone into labour and the clinic thought it was ours.

This taught us a bit of a lesson. Not to take anything for granted and that you guys could realistically come any day...

The next blog post will be about when you were born!

The last night in Delhi

2010-11-22T01:36:00.000-08:00

When we had arranged for the tour through Agra & Varanasi when we were first in Delhi, I had booked us a night at the Metropolitan Hotel (5 star hotel without being over the top) as I thought at the end of the trip we could use it. I was right... I really was!

Anyway so we get to Delhi, I'm feeling like a slightly dried up oil-slick by now due to the massage from Varanasi. I was so happy to have a shower I really was!

I had to ask to change our two single beds to one bed. We didn't tell our travel agent that we were gay (it was easier not to!). So when we were checking in - I asked. I think Larry was expecting it was going to be a bigger problem than it was. It wasn't. Keep in mind at this point (Feb 2009) homosexuality was still technically illegal in India. The hotel was fine with it. I guess it's one of the those things that can be easier when you're a foreigner - I don't know. But I'm also never going to pass for anything other than I am...

We actually did pretty much hide in the hotel for the next 24 hours. Apart from going off to get some ibuprofen. We walk into the pharmacy near the hotel and we're being asked if we want Viagra. I had to laugh - I did.

Following day was a quick flight to Mumbai and then a transfer to our Qantas flight home... we flew out of Mumbai knowing that our surrogate had tested positive and we were pregnant with what looked to be most likely twins (which we all know it was twins but at that point we didn't).

Varanasi

2010-11-12T20:26:00.000-08:00

So we're in Agra being shown the carpets that our guide's boss sells. You soon discover in India most people are trying to sell tourists everything. And guide's seem to have multiple bosses... ugh! We even had the driver come in and tell the guide off a couple of times as we were starting to run late. Thankfully he saved us as we were running late!

So we get taken to Agra station to wait for the train to Varanasi. It's reasonably late... so it's a night train. We're standing at Agra station waiting for the train and I'm seeing rats... I don't like rats. So I'm trying not to freak out. I think I did ok. So we get on the train - feeling a little bit conspicuous as we're both tall and we're both white... Train starts to move, I try to read not thinking I'd be getting much sleep. I was wrong... I fell asleep after about 10 minutes.

4am and the conductor taps my foot says Varanasi wanders off this freaked me out slightly. 10 minutes later he's back and it's the same thing. I have no idea really of what's going on... I wake Larry up as I'm guessing we're approaching Varanasi. Which we were. I left my jumper on the train too :( It was one of my favourites. Another one of my favourite jumpers Larry left in New York but I don't mention that anymore as I promised I wouldn't.

So we're wandering the streets of Varanasi trying to find our hotel - which proved remarkably easy... although the hotel wouldn't let us check in at 4:30am - understandably so. So we wandered down to the bank of the Ganges (the hotel wasn't that far from the river). It is always amazing how quiet pre-dawn is. Pretty much universally. So we get approached by one of the people that rows the boats on the Ganges asking us if we'd be interested in a dawn "cruise" I'd guess you'd call it. We had nothing else to do and we thought we had the money.

I will point at this stage that to most Westerners the reach of the Ganges we were at is completely and absolute toxic! Totally... this again of course slightly freaked me out.

I do have to say though watching sunrise on the Ganges was a truly marvellous experience. And that includes everything that goes with it. The holy men bathing in the Ganges. Watching the women wash saris in the rivers. The Gahts, the Gahts are a little creepy though! But having the opportunity to have all this explained to us was pretty cool.

We even got to send some prayer boats down the Ganges. I had some of my prayers answered! They are currently downstairs avoiding their nap... cheeky monkeys! I think we ended up on the river for about 3 hours or so. And of course that ended up being a lot more expensive than what we were originally quoted. So we said we'd return later with the money. So we checked into the hotel, had breakfast, got some cash and paid the guy.

We met our tour guide and we were shown around Varanasi. I don't really remember that much of the tour apart from meeting his boss that sold fabrics. We did buy something! We have a rather gorgeous cashmere blanket. We were shown some of the Gahts and had the significance explained to us. Ghandi was cremated in Varanasi. We also got to some cremations happening. Not exactly the sort of thing you want to see vacation necessarily...

It was explained to us by a monk at one of the poorhouses that if you were cremated at Varanasi you were closer to Nirvana and I'm not sure if I am remember this correctly but you may not have to be reincarnated. I expect I'm wrong on this one though. But there is a migration of people to Varanasi who are dieing.

In a lot of ways I found Varanasi quite spiritual but that's probably to be expected.

It was also a little bit of a poignant trip. We met a young gay guy. He took quite a shine to Larry (at this point to be honest I was pretty much over the whole India trip... I really was - I wanted to go home!) and he was so incredibly sweet to both of us. It also made me realise that in so many ways those of us who live in the West are so incredibly fortunate. Gay people in the bigger cities in India have it alright - it's still not as easy for them as it is for us. Those in the regional areas have it really quite tough. This guy was saying that he will still have to get married as his parents expect if of him (and it will be an arranged marriage). I really did feel for him. I can't imagine what that would be like.

Our guide had arranged for us to meet his Guru. Yes folks we got to spend time with a real indian Guru. This was an absolute scream. And it's a bit of a swindle when you really get down to it. But it was fun. I had my fortunate told by a Guru. That's pretty freaking cool.

The whole Guru thing to be honest was a bit of a laugh. I'm a little bit gullible and a little bit cynical. I paid the equivalent of US$200 to have someone pray once a year to help get rid of my karmic debt. Seems my relationship and my actions with my mother previously had caused a little of karmic issues... so *ahem* I paid to have them fixed. To only then about a year later completely wipe all that away. Ah well! Life has to be fun ;)

One other thing that I had to do in Varanasi was get an ayuervedic massage - one of the ones where they drip oil on your head. It's meant to be very good for you. The whole time I was laying there I was trying to not think about whether or not the oil was clean and how many times it had been used before etc... It wasn't really *that* relaxing. And due to the timing issues... I didn't have a chance for a shower before we returned to Delhi. So I basically hopped on the plane feeling like a giant oil slick.

Agra, the Taj Mahal & a dead camera

2010-11-07T16:04:00.001-08:00

So we get to Agra mid-afternoon maybe...

Check into the Holiday Inn - margarita time! Of course you're not meant to drink the water in India so this present a bit of a problem... No idea if the ice is made from tap water or filtered water. We survived so I assume it was filtered water.

I currently can't remember how long we were in Agra for - it may only have been the two nights... Agra is an amazing place. I was really blown away by it.

Ok onto the adventures. There's basically three things that you have see in Agra. The Red Fort, the Taj Mahal and the fort where Shah Jahan was imprisoned. We saw the Red Fort first. You have to take your shoes off! Seriously... this kind of freaked me out. I was also worried the whole time we were wandering around the Red Fort that our shoes were being held hostage (this ended up being technically true - we had to pay a RS10 minding fee). We were given a tour by a guy that basically latched onto us. Two tall white people tend to stick out. He kept telling us it was his sacred duty as a Muslim to take us through the Red Fort. So we have one of the insanest rides in an auto-rickshaw yet. Get taken through the Red Fort. I wasn't particularly impressed as I felt we were being swindled. Which we were. And that sucks!

So next we move onto the Taj Mahal and get the tour. I was completely and absolutely blown away by the Taj Mahal. I can not describe how beautiful it is except to say it is incredibly beautiful and none of the pictures do it any justice. They really don't. One piece of bad news is my 300D decided to die just as we were about to enter into the Taj Mahal *mutter mutter grumble grumble* so all my Taj Mahal photos and photos from that point were taken on my iPhone.

I think part of what makes the Taj so special too is that it's quiet. All of India is so loud and busy and in your face. And the Taj is honestly this little oasis of calm.

The Fort where Shah Jahan was imprisoned was almost as amazing as the Taj. The amount of workmanship and detail that went into these places is just staggering and so very beautiful.

The bit that really cracked me up about the tour guides is that you have to see everybody's boss. So... we ended up having to see some carpets and some marble. Because that's where his boss works or the brother of his boss or the great-uncle of his second cousin etc... it was funny, the driver had actually come in and tell the tourguide off as we were looking to be running late for our train to Varanasi.

I am so glad we took the time out to see the Taj Mahal. I was actually very humbled by it. It's beauty is honestly inspiring and breath-taking.

A brief visit to Delhi

2010-11-06T17:01:00.000-07:00

So we got the train from Mumbai to Delhi - that was ok... it wasn't that bad really. A bit uncomfortable and a little chilly but all in all it was ok. The couple we were sharing a berth with were quite nice. Retired couple from London who were visiting family. Although she loved to talk...

So we get to Delhi. Schlep around carrying our luggage trying to find someone who didn't seem like a tout to take us to our hotel that we knew was somewhere in Delhi but not quite sure where... So we find a cab driver who will take us to our hotel for RS350 (I think from memory). We thought the hotel was a bit further away than what it was. We were wrong. We could have walked there. So we basically got done... in reality it was about AUD$7 but you always feel a bit silly when you get ripped off.

So we check into the hotel to find out it backs onto a rather large Mosque. The call to prayer was rather loud. It was actually quite a nice hotel (the Broadway Hotel) and done very nicely, if not getting a bit tired. I'm not sure at what point we decided to get a tour but we did. We ended up going to a travel agent and getting them to organise a tour for us. Probably in part because we were a little bit sick of getting ripped off (we still got ripped off but not as much). So we ended up with a schedule that took us through Agra & Varanasi and gave us a tour guide for each leg of the remainder of the trip.

The Hotel was actually really good as because our driver was picking up at 7am - we were up before breakfast was served. They gave us breakfast. It was actually a very kind and a very awesome thing to do.

Our driver from Delhi to Agra was pretty cool. He was a really nice guy and his english was very good, to the point where there was no struggling with accents. There was completely insane stuff we saw on the way like people hanging out of helicopters to clean the top of electricity transmission towers. Snake charmers & monkey trainers. I refused to get out of the car for that one! There's not enough money in the world to get me close to a Cobra. Really there isn't!

Our driver took us to his village. Larry loved the experience - I was a bit freaked out by it. It was rural India and it was quite strange. It was lovely having Chai with his family though and his family were very kind to us. We also got to go to the local school and meet the kids and have a quick chat with them. That was sweet. I actually didn't take any photos of all this as it just didn't feel right.

The drive to Agra took maybe 8 hours or so...

We ended up at a Holiday Inn of all places - which actually did pretty good margaritas from memory ;)

i'm a bit slack

2010-11-06T17:00:00.001-07:00

sorry regular readers :(

I've been really slack with keeping up to date with my blog

I suck!

I will try to get some blogging done in the near future - I will :)

michael

i'm going to the movies

2010-09-05T23:16:00.001-07:00

i'm going to the movies, originally uploaded by nettsu.

It's funny... I haven't been the movies for well and truly a year. I was trying to remember the last time we went to the movies and it may have been for the last James Bond movie or X-Men Wolverine. I really can't remember!

I've been a massive fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion since the 1990s when SBS first screened it. They screened anime in prime-timeish... Monday nights at 9:30. I was working a split shift and I'd be in bad by 8:30pm most night. But Monday nights I'd stay up to catch Neon Genesis. Fanboy/Geek/Nerd... that's me ;)

Then fast-forward to 2009 and I discover (rather belatedly) that there's been a remaking/re-imaginging of Neon Genesis. I hunt high & low for the DVD (well I fib I looked on ebay) so I got Evangelion 1.0 and I was blown away. I was back to where I was when I first saw Neon Genesis Evangelion all those many many years ago ;)

And as I follow madman entertainment on twitter - I found out that Evangelion 2.0 was part of reelanime (an anime festival) so I then proceeded to debate about whether to go or not.

Couple of problems:
Time. When? Trying to coordinate a time with Larry who's travelling a bit with work. The nanny and when she works. Trying to find a baby-sitter. It was almost too hard.

Did I really want to drag Larry to something he has no interest in.

So I decided to basically just get a ticket for myself for this Thursday. I have no problems going to the movies by myself - always have done - quite comfortable with it :)

So this Thursday I will be geeking out and since the nanny started a couple of months ago I will be doing something for myself... I will be doing something not baby related... how odd...

xo
michael

Same-sex couples face injustice on adoption by Verity Firth

2010-09-01T01:56:00.000-07:00

This was in the Sydney Morning Herald today and I'm just reposting it (lazy I know!)

Same-sex couples face injustice on adoption
Verity Firth
September 1, 2010

I recently met a family in my local electorate, Balmain. As in many
families, both parents work and go to playgroups and weekend sport. Their
cupboard is full of prepared gifts for the endless cycle of year 1 birthday
parties. They are expert in keeping the peace between their bossy daughter
and her baby brother.

The difference between this family and most others is the parents are gay.

Both men have the telltale bags under their eyes that come with juggling
work, raising two young children and trying to remember what a social life
was like. These are decent people who clearly have a deep love for their
kids and strong commitment to each other.

They came to talk to me about the inability of same-sex couples to adopt in
NSW. The issue affects their family directly. Despite raising children and
sharing their life together, only one is a legally recognised parent of
their children. The other has a parenting order, conferring many of the same
legal responsibilities, but there is no legal mechanism allowing his
parenthood to be properly recognised.

I left the meeting with two lasting impressions. The first was an easy
recipe for a bechamel cheese sauce to make recalcitrant four-year-olds eat
their veggies - which proved successful with my daughter. The second was a
deep sense of injustice about the existing adoption legislation.

Many arguments against same-sex adoption stem from a belief children have a
right to, or are best served by, a mother and a father. For most of us who
grew up with a mother and a father, perhaps this is an understandable
reaction. But it fails to acknowledge that many children grow up with single
parents or grandparents, in joint custody situations or with gay and lesbian
parents. When we deny these kids and their families legal rights, we are not
protecting children, we are punishing them for their family not resembling
the nuclear ''ideal''.

Research has repeatedly shown that kids growing up with gay parents are no
more likely to be gay, suffer from mental or physical illnesses or be
unfairly disadvantaged. In fact, one recent study suggested kids with two
mums were more likely to be well-adjusted and have higher self-esteem.

In 2008, I proudly supported the NSW government's recognition of lesbian
co-parents of children born through assisted reproductive technologies such
as IVF. The government has now removed every piece of discriminatory
legislation against lesbians, gay men and their families - other than the
Adoption Act.

The member for Sydney, Clover Moore, has introduced a bill to Parliament
seeking to remove adoption discrimination. I applaud her efforts. Both the
main parties have allowed their members a conscience vote on this, and it
looks like the vote will be close.

Adoption is not a right. Making same-sex couples eligible would not entitle
them to adopt children.

But reform would provide a mechanism for same-sex couples to have their
parenthood recognised, and to expand the pool of potential adoptive parents.
Currently, lesbian and gay step-parents and foster parents caring for
children across the state are unable to formalise that relationship.
Allowing adoption would provide these children with the legal and emotional
certainty of two legally recognised parents able to make medical decisions,
sign notes for school and ensure the children were protected if one parent
died.

Adoption equality is not just about substantive rights and legal
protections. Removing discrimination is about respecting human dignity and
ensuring everyone has the best possible opportunities in life, regardless of
their sexuality or that of their parents.

I was about 14 when it dawned on me that everyone should be free to love
whoever they fall in love with, and that a civilised society would never
stand in the way of something as giving and fundamentally human as this.

It is my firm belief same-sex couples and their children should have all the
same rights, responsibilities and protections as heterosexual couples and
their families. Discrimination on the basis of sexuality is completely
unsupported by any evidence, and more importantly is unjust.

I am proud to be supporting Moore's bill to remove the last piece of
discrimination against same-sex couples and their families. I look forward
to a day soon when unjust discrimination is a thing of the past.

Verity Firth is the NSW Labor state Minister for Education.

some photography tips & tricks I did for some gay dads groups

2010-08-26T19:02:00.001-07:00

Hi Folks,

Ok, for those who don’t know, I’m an amateur photographer, quite a keen one and also it seems quite a good one (but that’s entirely subjective) – I still have so much to learn and much further to go. Anyway, I’ve had work exhibited both here in Melbourne on numerous occasions and also once in New York in an interactive exhibition (that was very exciting!). I’ve also had a couple of photos published - which was also very cool.

So I was thinking that it might be a good idea to compile a tips & tricks document that will hopefully become organic in nature. I’m not the world’s best photographer and I don’t claim to be.

For those who haven’t seen them:

My two flickr sites

My own -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/nettsu/ (which pretty much has everything I do in it! The good & the bad!)

My family photostream -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/larryandmichael/

Now down to the nitty gritty…

Your equipment shouldn’t matter (how many times have you heard this line!). You should be able to achieve good photos with any camera. Better cameras don’t make better photographers. Please don’t even think that to take good photos you need to spend the money on a dSLR. Learn what your camera can do. Read the manual (I don’t think I’ve ever read a manual start to finish to be honest). Learn what each mode does and what you can achieve with it. Find what you like and run with it :) Or basically play. Select the mode, shoot a couple of snaps and see if you like the result.

Take multiple shots. Memory is cheap – buy multiple memory cards. I suggest multiple shots for a number of reasons, children move fast! I’ve learnt this. Also I think its better if your shots of people with their eyes open rather than their eyes shut.

Auto. This can either be a bug-bear or a saviour. Most “real” photographers will tell you not to shoot in Auto. Ignore them – as a friend of mine said – camera companies have spent millions on developing these modes, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t use them. I personally will only use Auto when I can’t the image I want to work using my presets (normally shooting in full sun).

Flashes… well yes. Not a fan. I think in the nearly 11 months plus of the girls life I have used the flash maybe 3-4 times. I really try not to use the onboard flash as they are incredibly bright and while I may be over-reacting I am concerned about the potential damage that incredibly bright light can do to little eyes. This is entirely personal choice! But this ties into my next point.

Be aware of light and where light is coming from. Use it to your advantage. This is one of the things in my mind that takes a photo from ordinary to extraordinary. Be aware of the direction of the light and what it’s going to put in shadow. Also keep in mind you are much better taking photos in the shade/indirect light then you are taking photos in full sunlight. Now post-processing can help (I use CS3 but I don’t know nearly a tenth of what it can do) some images but the old adage is really true – crap in, crap out (or garbage in, garbage out). iPhoto from what I understand also has some pretty powerful, basic photo editing tools. Not sure about PC based programs sorry – I haven’t used a PC in a number of years.

Composition (or how you frame/shoot your photographs). At the end of the day this is what makes or breaks a good photo. A badly composed photo is a badly composed photo. We’ve all seen photos with people’s heads cut off etc… this isn’t really about that. This is more about space and negative space. Be aware of negative space and how you can use it to your advantage. As in if you have a child up against a wall maybe move back a bit to make it more interesting. Be aware of background elements in the photo you are trying to take as they can detract or add to a photo. Also don’t feel constrained to shoot in either a horizontal or a vertical mode. Mix it up a little, shoot on an angle. Get closer to your subject, get further away etc… again just play and have fun with it. Another idea is maybe try to get candid shots of people with your baby/babies. I think we’ve all seen the overly forced smile photos – you know the ones I mean where people either look constipated or in physical pain – a lot of people don’t like having their photos taken so try to be more obtuse about it and there is a certain sweetness or elegance that come through candid shots.

iPhone apps – there’s a number of iPhone apps that can be fun to use to create interesting and quirky pictures. There’s some for android equipped phones again but as I’m an apple fanboy, I have no idea about these things ;)

Amongst my favourites are hipstamatic for that wonderful toy camera feeling and Best Camera which allows a number of different treatments (fake polaroids for example). Cameraphones are very good for having on you at all times as you never know just what’s going to happen. I shot mostly with a dSLR but I have a point & shoot in the nappy bag and I always have my iPhone with me.

Further resources:

MIT has a bunch of photography related courses online -> http://www.petapixel.com/2010/02/16/mit-photography-courses-online/

The Melbourne Camera Club in South Melbourne has an introduction to photography course that we (Larry & myself) found quite educational -> http://www.melbournephoto.org.au/introduction-to-photography-course.html

The classes go very fast though! I think it’s $250 for 8 or 10 weeks from memory.

If anyone has any questions please feel free to fire away – more than happy to answer them :)

Cheers

Michael

Election 2010 and how I'm voting

2010-08-19T20:00:00.000-07:00

I still haven't decided how I'm voting. There's 6 candidates in my safe(ish) labor seat. The incumbent Labor member, an openly gay Liberal candidate, a greens candidate, a family first candidate, an australian secular party candidate and an australian sex party candidate.

Apparently Melbourne Ports has since been classified as a marginal seat... Don't ask me I don't get it.

So first the no's

I'm not voting for Family First. I absolutely, completely refuse to on principle. This is a party that espouses family values are more important than anything else and they are generally the most narrow minded and bigoted people you will encounter. Like pretty much being told that me raising my family is akin to child abuse because I have denied my children the right to a mother and a father.

I am not voting for the Australian Sex Party. I can never work out if these people are serious or not. I really can't. It always feel like it's a piss-take of some description or another. From their policy statement "The Australian Sex Party is a political response to the sexual needs of Australia in the 21st century. It is an attempt to restore the balance between sexual privacy and sexual publicity that has been severely distorted by morals campaigners and prudish politicians."

The Australian Secular Party is another I just don't get. They're all for the seperation of church & state but their philosophy confused me.

So the Labor sitting representative. Now I've never seen my local representative. I get the odd newsletter here & there which is the usual crap about what a fabulous job he thinks he's doing... Now he is his party's representative so I am judging him on that. I completely disagree with the ALP's stand on the proposed internet filter, this is a democracy, the government doesn't not have the right to censor information without the populations knowledge. We have the right to discuss, question and contest it - as we do now with our current classification guidelines. I also think NBNCo is a massive waste of money - wee fibre to home networks when large numbers of people are moving to wireless technologies... Then there's the leadership coup, that left a really bad taste in my mouth as to what our elected officials are capable of. And then there's the cheap vote buying ala this was in one of my local papers this week - "Danby flags shift on same-sex laws. Labor Melbourne Ports MHR Michael Danby told a crowd of voters at St Kilda Town Hall that he believed a policy shift on same-sex marriage was "coming". Although he supported Labor's stance leading into the election. He flagged the possibility of "serious movement" on the issue, saying many politicians supported overturning the same-sex marriage ban introduced in 2004." I find this really insulting personally. I do.

Then I'm torn between the greens candidate and the liberal candidate. I'm getting more conservative as I'm getting older (and also because I now have a family) which is part of it. I'm hestitant to vote for the Greens candidate as I don't want the preferences going to Labor and I really, really hate preferential voting. I also find the liberal candidate kind of endearing but also kind of irksome. He's "openly" gay but yet he refers to his partner in gender neutral terms, that annoys me...

I suspect I'll end up voting Liberal...

And I'm voting Greens in the Senate. I don't want either major political party with control of both houses.

Mumbai Memories

2010-08-19T00:47:00.000-07:00

I really didn't like Mumbai.

It's hot, dusty, smelly, dirty, filthy, dirty, filthy. I know there's a reason for some of this namely poverty and being India's largest city people will migrate to it in the hope of making money or breaking free of the cycle of poverty - I admire them for that. But there was stuff that just made me shake my head. There'd be people squatting on the street and there'd be a toilet maybe 20-30 metres away from them (now I have never been in a public toilet in India and I feel that was probably a wise move!).

It really was a culture shock for me. I was confronted on an almost daily basis on the contrasts between the haves and the have-nots and just how people survive. I was miserable and I think I made your father miserable too! You also have the insanity of the Mumbai commuter trains. It's fun to watch (in hindsight) how intimidated tourists are to try to get on one of these trains. They are packed to the absolute brim with people still hanging out the edges and there seems to be some form of coordination to the chaos that took your father and myself a couple of trains to work out - we basically just took the plunge and jumped on the train. We were trying to get tickets to Delhi as that was the next place your father and I wanted to go to. This is where we met the next part of what I found to be really frustrating about Mumbai - everyone is out to scam you or alternatively there are just so many layers of bureaucracy it's crazy. So we were told that we had to go to a certain station to get tickets for the Rajdhani Express. So we go to that station - stand in a line to get a token, to then stand in another line to get to a ticket window to be informed we have to a different station (foreign national ticket office) to repeat the process... rinse, lather, repeat.

So we buy the tickets to Delhi. Your father wanted to go first class as the Rajdhani Express is meant to be quite an experience in first class. We ended up in Second Class as tickets are booked out months and months ahead for first class and there's only so many allocated to foreign nationals.

I will be honest and admit at this point that I love Indian Food, I especially love Indian Food in India (although I know it's not referred to as Indian Food). But it's so good, the thalis, the masalas, the sambar, the poha, the wedu... etc ;) I would get fat living in India! There was also a rather interesting restaurant that was attached to our hotel called Out of the Blue that did fusion foods. So a blend of western & Indian cooking - that was so good! I can still remember it a penne served with a creamy green chilli masala. Blew me away!

We did some of the typical touristy stuff before we left for Delhi - checked out Mumbai, the Elphanata Caves. India has such a sense of history that most places in the world can't come near and there's something very spiritual and humbling about it all.

We were in Mumbai for 3 days before heading off to Delhi. There was something else I was going to say I have completely forgotten now!

American Airlines

2010-08-12T21:24:00.000-07:00

Just wow

Seriously

Just wow...

We left Dulles on the 9th for what should have been a relatively straightforward flight to LAX. Should have been... The plane had a damaged spoiler they decided to tie down which then meant that we had to stop in Tulsa to refuel. The woman at the Admiral's Club reassured us that we'd make our connecting flight as the refuel only takes 20 minutes - HA!

So we're on the plane.

It's the usual bitter, twisted, miserable and rude staff. Dear American Airlines Air Crew if you hate your jobs that much - find a new one! Please!

Everything is too much effort. Mind you were given free headsets rather than being charged the usual $2 for them. The sound on the movie wasn't working properly as Larry was rather curtly informed when he was the 20th person to tell the crew the sound wasn't working.

Sorry I skipped ahead slightly.

The pilot had informed us that they had a choice of kicking 30 passengers off or flying slow & low and refuelling in Tulsa. They took option 2. Ok...

Refuelling took an hour...

We get to LAX an hour late. We obviously miss our connecting flight. We're directed from the international connections desk to the customer service desk. The girl at the customer service desk basically tells us that she doesn't care as her shift is over and there's not going to be anyone to replace her. So we have to go to the ticket desk to be reticketed... (I could have screamed at this point). Told everything is ok and that we'll be put on the next available flight to Melbourne (the following night) so in the interim we're being put up in the LAX Marriott for the night. It's currently after midnight LA time. So we head to the hotel... check in and there's one restaurant open and no 24 hour room service! Beyond that it was actually a very nice hotel.

So the following morning Larry rings Qantas to find out what is going on. They can't help us - so Larry rings American Airlines - they can't help us (this was about 2 hours on the phone). So he decides to head to the airport to talk to the Qantas and American Airlines desks. This was also an exercise in futility. Apparently there's only certain staff from American that are trained in the Qantas system so we had to wait for them to start.

So at 4pm we all track down to the airport (the cute baby factor can help!) to see if we can get home. So all seems well. We have tickets - we have bassinets for the girls. We also have a connecting flight through Brisbane but that should be ok. We ask after the luggage and are assured that everything should be ok.

So we head over to the airport again around 9pmish to wait for our flight. We get on the plane and all is easy. The girls sleep most of the way to Brisbane. And really it is amazing how different Qantas really is. We have to collect our luggage in Brisbane as we have to escort it through customs before flying to Melbourne. We're standing there and standing there and standing there... Larry had made a comment when we were walking through immigration that it would be funny if our luggage was lost.

Still standing there...

Larry wanders over to the lost baggage counter and I'm still waiting. I'm then informed that the last of the luggage is out. Our luggage is "lost".

FFS

It was en route to Melbourne on the plane we had originally been re-ticketed on... it actually beat us to Melbourne... The Qantas flight to Melbourne was lovely - all of the air crew were more than willing and happy to help us. So my fellow Australians the next time you whinge about how bad Qantas is - try flying American Airlines.

I really never ever want to fly American Airlines again!

Travelling... (Virginia Part 1)

2010-07-28T06:39:00.000-07:00

It's a nightmare...
24 hours roughly of travelling.
The girls all things considered actually did really well. There was no major meltdowns. Louise didn't sleep much as she had to know everything that was going on. So she'd be asleep and someone would come talk to us about the girls and up would pop her cute little head - get a cheeky smile. It really is very, very cute.

I got the chance to watch 2 movies!
Which for a 15 hour flight is a scream - got to watch both Clash of the Titans & Alice in Wonderland, broken and interupted quite a bit but did eventually get to watch them. Enjoyed both of them.

Qantas I love you! The staff were awesome. The passengers were pretty good (better than our connecting flight). We were waiting for everyone else to get off the plane when we landed at LAX and we were getting congratulated on being able to deal with the girls as well as we did (which was a bit weird). Got patted on the back by a drunk bogan and got a resounding "well done mate". American Airlines - you suck. Larry and I get split up (nothing new for them) and we get put in seats that are nowhere near an aisle... yeah smart move with babies. I could have done with the smartass behind me though who quite loudly said great and rolled his eyes when he saw me with Olivia. I know travelling with babies is an imposition on a lot of people - but my girls are good ;)

We had a really nice moment at LAX when we were going through customs. My surname is different to everyone else in my family and the customs officer was a bit taken aback by that! That struck me as really quite sweet.

Oh and hire car shennigans! I wanted a Ford Fusion - you know a nice mid-size sedan. We got a bonus upgrade to a Saturn Vue. Which is a Holden Captiva in Australia which we looked at getting at one stage. Larry's impression of it - it's a boat! *giggles*

Oh and the internet is so fast here!

India Part 1 - Part 2 - the first baby video

2010-07-23T19:08:00.000-07:00

I should have included this with the last blog post but technical issues in trying to find a .dat to .mov convertor that wasn't windoze based (apoligies too for the watermark but hey I'm only converting one video so I'm not paying for it).

Two of these blastocysts are Louise and Olivia. Pretty amazing isn't it? I just had to share this as it was and still is something so completely and absolutely amazing.

the other link to it is here -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/larryandmichael/4822821828/

India Part 1 (Part 1 of many)

2010-07-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

There are so many things in life that just end up comedic. Or unintentionally comedic...

So anyway we were still trying to get pregnant. Now obviously there is only so much "stuff" that can be used before it runs out. We had our egg donor cycled and ready to go... and we get an email from the clinic. We had to be the next day to deliver more "stuff" or as we've rather delicately decided to describe it genetic material. Cue the fits of hysterics... the stress... the frenzied phonecalls/emails etc... basically explaining that we can not physically get to Mumbai by the next day.

So there's a frenzy of activity including me begging work for 10 days off so we can go to India. I seriously did work with an awesome bunch of people! I really did :) I still miss them at times. So anyway, we manage to get into Mumbai on the Friday (we were supposed to be there on the Wednesday) and had an appointment at the Clinic on the Saturday (that being Valentine's day - nawwwww!). Our babies we're created on Valentine's Day (nawwwwww!).

I'll digress for a second. There's something really quite surreal about being in Business Class on a Qantas flight and landing in the middle of one of the worlds largest slums. It probably was a pretty good introduction into the culture shock I was in for the next two weeks... I'm not a particularly well-travelled person, I will also admit that. At this point I've been to Hong Kong (enjoyed it!), Vietnam with your Dad (that was interesting), the States with your Dad (LOVED IT!), Singapore (I actually really had fun in Singapore) and the two trips to India.

We were very lucky in that we got to meet your surrogate and kind of in a roundabout way we got to meet your egg donor. Well we didn't get to meet her as such... but I was sitting in the waiting room trying to work out if the pretty woman on the other side of the room was your egg donor or not. Your father told me off for staring as I was most likely going to freak her out... which I probably did. I can have that effect on people. Just so you know - your egg donor is very pretty, she's very short (which is probably why you're both short-arses) and she just had such a beautiful face. Your surrogate was very quiet and very shy but she seemed to have a good soul - your father gave her some flowers to say thank you and she was left speechless (in a good way!).

So this was to be our sixth and final attempt. Although to be honest, I think your father and I would have kept trying until we got the desired outcome. As in we would have found the money for further attempts from somewhere. We wouldn't have given up but as we found out before we left India we didn't need to try again! We had found out that our surrogate was pregnant with twins.

The two of you were created on the 14th of February and you were transferred into the surrogate on the 16th of February. Your father and I were in India for about another week. We decided to have a bit of a tour around while we had the chance to do so. The next couple of blog posts will be about my experiences in India... should hopefully be entertaining!

I'm taking a brief hiatus :)

well not that most of you will notice considering how irregularly I blog... but we're off to Virginia for Larry's 20th High School Reunion and so the girls can meet their grandmother.

michael

Kitchen shenanigans or just plain insanity

2010-07-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

So my friend Elli made Nigella's donut french toast. The idea being that the french toast was based on a powered donut... Which got me to thinking - what if you made french toast out of donuts. So I set myself a mission to make french toast using donuts. Originally I thought Nigella would be proud. Now in hindsight I'd think Elvis would be proud...

Elli's effort and how the damn thing is actually meant to look - http://www.flickr.com/photos/1773/4765975036

Donut French Toast

INGREDIENTS

2 eggs

4 teaspoons vanilla extract

60ml full-fat milk 

4 slices from a small white loaf or 2 slices from a large white loaf, each large slice cut in half  - this is obviously where I chose to use Cinnamon Donuts

25g butter, plus a drop of flavourless oil for frying 

50g caster sugar 

Serving Size : Serves 2

METHOD

1.Beat the eggs with the milk and vanilla in a wide, shallow bowl. 

2.Soak the bread halves in the eggy mixture for 5 minutes a side. 

Problem 1 - I soaked the donuts for a little two long and one split (you'll see in the next photo)

3.Heat the butter and oil in a frying pan, and fry the egg-soaked bread until golden and scorched in parts on both sides. 

4.Put the sugar on a plate and then dip the cooked bread in it until coated like a sugared doughnut

These actually taste better than you'd think... they are incredibly sweet though. Disgustingly sweet. Would I make them again? No. Was it fun? Yes. I have any number of giggles about this over the past couple of days. Just the idea and then the execution. It's fun to play with food every now & then ;)

Mommy Dearest…

2010-06-26T04:38:00.000-07:00

Most of my therapy to date has been about my relationship with my mother. I have been in therapy for excess of 3 years. We had a break through this year – I admitted that I hated my mother. Now this is a pretty big step… I will have to venture in the deep murky depths of what my mother was/is and what it all means to me.

My mother left when I was 10 years old. She ran away with the man across the road in a tacky middleclass melodrama. I was very much a mama’s boy – I will admit that – I felt closer to my mother than I did to my father. And when she left I felt completely and absolutely betrayed.

It’s very clear in my memory. I woke up one early one morning and walked in her and Dad’s bedroom, she had packed all of her clothes in her suitcases. I asked her where she was going – she said on vacation. I asked her to take me with her and said no. I went to school thinking everything was ok. I got home from school to find my father sitting on the couch absolutely devastated. Mother had left – packed up all her belongings and left her husband and her two kids to run away with a younger man from across the street. This man eventually became my stepfather. This is also the day that pretty much changed your Opa forever. He loved your grandmother, I don’t think she quite released how much. European men have great difficulties expressing or showing emotion and your grandfather was definitely one of those kind of men.

So anyway…

There’s very much a history of your grandmother and I have problems. She’s had periodic contact with me through most of my life since I was 10. I went years without contact from her or contact with her.

One point I will make and this shapes a large part of my relationship with your grandmother. I was abused (she denies it but that’s to be expected) physically and emotionally. And those scars run deep! If you ever need confirmation just ask your Uncle Eddie he’ll tell you. Now a large part of the problems that I have with your grandmother stem from this abuse. We’ll get back to this.

So anyway through most of my teenage years I didn’t really have much to do with your grandmother. I think I got back in touch with her when I was 18 or 19. I seem to remember driving out to see her and my stepfather when I had my first car. Not long after that they moved to WA. I didn’t really have much contact with them after that.

I eventually got back in contact with her. I always felt like I needed my mother. I should have realised that my mother and I really don’t have anything in common apart from a blood connection and to be honest – that’s really not enough.

At the end of 1996, I moved to Western Australia. My then partner and I had split, were having huge problems and I thought why not! This is actually the first major mistake I made with your grandmother. I should have stayed in Brisbane. I was with your grandmother and stepfather for 2 days before I was in my own apartment in Rockingham some horrific little town about 90kms south of Perth. Your grandmother and I fought – a lot! She also threatened to hit me at one stage, which was when I decided I would move back to Brisbane. In the space of 24 hours I had sold up everything and I mean everything! What I couldn’t sell I donated. I bought a bus ticket back to Brisbane and I spent the night in the grounds of the Casino in Perth.

This is probably one of my regrets and a bit of a low point. I was a bit mean to your grandmother at this stage. Her and my stepfather did buy me some furniture and had set me up in the apartment with the bond and everything else. I did resent them because I didn’t feel particularly welcome. And also I suspect your grandmother wasn’t expecting to deal with an adult – I think she wanted the 10 year old back or she was at least expecting the 10 year old. Somehow I went from being 10 to be being 24. So anyway that went badly and ended badly. My mother and I didn’t speak for a good long while.

So eventually when I was talking to your Uncle Eddie he asks if it’s ok for mother to have my email address. I think sure why not. What’s the harm? If it will make her feel better that she’s back in contact with her two sons – then why not? So mother and I communicate by email for years. It’s nothing – it’s gloss, nothing really deep or personal is ever revealed by me at least. I think mother revealed more but I didn’t really care. I found it all a bit trivial and boring to be honest.

It all kind of changed with your father. Family is very important to your Dad, so I tried to repair my relationship with my father and improve my relationship with my mother. My father unfortunately was a lost cause (I may explain that much later). My mother was thrilled – she was so excited when your father and I committed to each other. She was also very excited to find out that we were trying to start a family. The starting a family came before the commitment – if your father and I were going to have a family then I wanted a commitment between ourselves (this at times proves to be a real challenge though – I do love your father so very much but we have our problems). I was joking for a while that it was a shotgun wedding.

This is about where the story starts to turn back to the darkside…

So anyway, my mother and I are getting on ok. I’m uncomfortable and awkward talking to her on the phone. I don’t like it – I didn’t like sharing things with her it just didn’t feel right to me. It really didn’t. She was missing for so much of my life – she missed all the important things and she didn’t care. Mind you the opposite was also true I missed so much of her life and I just didn’t care – at all. I realise how horrible this sounds – but getting over the betrayal of a parent leaving you is hard (if not impossible).

I was trying.

Maybe not particularly successfully but I was trying.

So back to where I was. We found out that our surrogate had miscarried. Your father was in London and I needed someone to talk to. I rang my mother. I really, really, really, really, really, really, really shouldn’t have. It gave the signal to my mother that everything was ok between us. It wasn’t but I felt I had done the wrong thing by ringing her and I wasn’t sure how to fix that.

My mother and stepfather had planned to come visit us in May 2009 (largely to meet the original set of twins) and they stuck to that after the miscarriage. The reunion with my mother was awkward for me to say the least. By this stage mother and I hadn’t seen each other for over 12 years. She was very touchy-feely and physical and I wasn’t comfortable with that. She was also a bit too curious about things that I felt she had no right to ask questions about:

how much your father made
how much I made
how much the house in the city was worth
how much the house in the country was worth

I just felt they were really inappropriate questions to ask.

There was a couple of defining moments though. She had known your father for less than an hour and she called him a snob. That just really set my teeth on edge for some reason. I just didn’t really think it was appropriate. The other was – we were meeting your Uncle Mike for dinner – I think he was curious to know what my family was like. So we’re walking past an aboriginal art gallery in Flinders Lane in the city and she’s telling me all about the darkies & the abos in Western Australia (these are two terms you should never use when referring to aboriginals) and I found it really surprising that my mother – who’s a migrant would use these terms at all. I was also really quite surprised that she was that much of a bigot and a redneck.

So the happy reunion was a miserable failure. I was happy to see the back of them to be honest.

She wanted to come back and visit after you guys were born. This concept freaked me out – mostly because she wanted to stay with us. I have not shared a roof with your grandmother for more than 2 days since 1996 and before that it was in the early 80s. This completely and absolutely stressed me out. I managed to delay her visit until late January 2010. And as the date was creeping closer I was freaking out more and more. So I rang her. I asked her not to come. And I have no idea of what happened from that point – it became a whole series of other people’s dramas. I will never speak to your grandmother again based on her behaviour from when I asked her not to come – I asked her to understand that it was what I thought was best for my family, a concept that I will admit is completely alien to her, and I didn’t mean for her never to come (on some level I did I’ll be honest).

There is more to this story but I will leave this here. It will get mired in the pettiness otherwise and this is a situation I need to move on from. I regret that I don’t have a relationship with my mother. But I am also relieved that I don’t have a relationship with my mother (if you get the gist of the catch22).

My sincerest and deepest hope is that I will be a better parent to you both than what my mother was to me. I don't ever want you guys to go through the pain, misery, hatred and agony that your grandmother has put me through.

My final comment on this - I was walking with your grandmother down the street we used to live in Trentham and she asked me if I had any happy memories of my childhood with her. I don't. I've searched for them. I don't have any. And that saddens me...

back to the surrogacy story

2010-06-24T19:46:00.000-07:00

So where we…

That was a bit of diversion really!

We will be back to me trust me. It generally works like that…

So anyways… we’re in early 2008. You’re father has just gotten back from the trip to London and he’s pointed out this article in the International Herald Tribune. So we start investigating whether or not we can do it. Financially, it’s much more viable for us (as surrogacy in India is considerably cheaper than the US). So we we start to investigate the possibilities. Now at this point your Dad is working in Singapore for 3 months (I did say he travelled a lot).

So while we were talking about and investigating the possibilities for us to create a family your father had the ability to fly from Singapore to Mumbai. It’s a 9 hour flight – which doesn’t seem like much really.

So your father was investigating two options.

One was with Dr Patel in Anand. She normally doesn’t deal with single men but she made an exception for your father. This is where your father and I had a bit of a heated discussion. I was also moderately offended that he was approaching her as a single man – to me it felt like he was creating our family based on a lie and I wasn’t really that important in the grand scheme of things from his perspective.

The other was with Rotunda in Mumbai. This clinic also had it’s own challenges. When your father went to sign up with them – they sent him home with his file cover sheet, which was what meant to identify him… so they lost “us” for about 9 months.

So as Rotunda didn’t seem particularly keen to begin with. We decided to progress with Dr Patel – we were very lucky and our surrogate got pregnant after the first transfer. We found out a couple of weeks in that it was twins! We were excited – your father and I wanted twins – I’ll explain that in a later blog post. We then found out it was in fact triplets. The third foetus was hiding behind one of the other ones. We were informed that at 12 weeks our surrogate would be undergoing a foetal reduction. A rather barbaric practice in India where one of the foetal hearts is injected with a solution that forces the heart to stop. The surrogate’s body then eventually rejects the foetus – this also potentially increases the risk of a miscarriage of all foetuses. When our surrogate was pregnant at 15 weeks, I get a phonecall from your father who was in London at the time – our surrogate had miscarried and lost the remaining two foetuses.

I had never in my entire life felt so devastated or crushed or alone. And your father was half a world away. I really didn’t know what to do. I have never before in my entire life just crumpled. After I got off the phone to your father I did just that – I crumpled. I cried for about 2 hours and then on and off for the next 5 days… The following day I also made one of the biggest mistakes of my life – I rang my mother. I’ll explain that in my next blog post.

So when your father came home from London we discussed options. Where did we go to from this point. We finally got Rotunda to realise that we were supposed to be doing something with them and they started the process of for us.

Your father heard my concerns about going through Dr Patel as a single man. Mostly how we would explain that we were both there at the birth to eventually pick up baby or babies. That I really didn’t feel comfortable starting our family based on a lie. I still will occasionally have my gay activist hat on.

So we had another 3 attempts – 1 with Dr Patel and two with Rotunda… I’ll be honest. Your Dad and I were running out of money. We didn’t know if we could afford any more attempts. We decided to give it one more try (which actually became our most expensive attempt to date! But I’ll explain in the post following the one about my mother – it’s the trip to India!!!).

now for something completely unrelated to parenting... help me decide

2010-06-24T17:08:00.001-07:00

Hi Folks,

I'm trying to decide between two images for unsensored10. An exhibition of analogue photography that I am always thrilled to be involved with.

I've narrowed my shortlist down to two images - I did think of running both but I won't. I will just go for one larger image.

I'm debating between these two!

And I guess you really can't get two very different images really :)

Dangerous

Trentham Falls

If you'd like feel free to leave me a comment on which you think I should go with :)

thanks!

michael

This is the article that started our surrogacy journey

2010-06-14T03:36:00.001-07:00

This is a very short blog post (well the actual post from me!)

As I am just posting the article that Larry read in the International Herald Tribune that started our surrogacy journey in India... (and the story of that journey is coming I promise!). This is purely being posted in my blog so that one day I can show this to the girls and say this is where it all started. This is why we went through India rather than the US or Canada.

Foreign couples turn to India for surrogate mothers

By Amelia Gentleman

Published: Tuesday, March 4, 2008

MUMBAI — Yonatan Gher and his male partner plan eventually to tell their child that it was made in India, in the womb of a woman they never met, with the egg of a Mumbai housewife they picked out from an Internet line-up of candidates.
The embryo was formed in January in an Indian fertility clinic about 4,000 kilometers, or 2,500 miles, from Gher's home in Tel Aviv, nurtured by a team of doctors who have begun specializing in surrogacy services for couples from around the world.
As they waited to see if the fertilization process had been successful, Gher, 29, and his partner sped around the streets of Mumbai in the back of an autorickshaw, drinking in scenes of a country they had never previously visited, staring at the unfamiliar faces of Indian women and children and "trying to imagine our child," he said.
"The child will know early on that he or she is unique, that it came into the world in a very special way," said Gher, a communications officer for the environmental group Greenpeace. "But as it grows up and asks questions about the birds and the bees, then we will need to go into more detail."
Reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding enterprise in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe in recent months, as word spreads of India's combination of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.
Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some European countries and subject to a wide spectrum of regulation in U.S. states, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost of the medical procedures, air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby) comes to around $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States.
"People are increasingly exposed to the idea of surrogacy in India; Oprah Winfrey talked about it on her show," said Dr. Kausal Kadam in her office at the Rotunda clinic, an hour after creating an embryo for Gher and his partner, with sperm from one of the men (they would not disclose which one) and an egg removed from a donor just minutes before in another part of the clinic.
No contacts between egg donor, surrogate mother or future parents were permitted.
There are no firm statistics on how many surrogacies are being arranged here for foreigners, but anecdotal evidence suggests a sharp increase.
Rudy Rupak, co-founder and president of PlanetHospital, a U.S. medical tourism agency, said he expects to send at least 100 couples to India this year for surrogacy, up from 25 in 2007, the first year he offered the service.
"Every time there is a success story, hundreds of inquiries follow," he said.
In Anand, a city in the eastern state of Gujarat where the practice was pioneered in India, more than 50 surrogate mothers are currently pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Britain and elsewhere. Fifteen of them are living together in a hostel attached to the clinic there, waiting to give birth.
Dr. Naina Patel, who runs the Anand clinic, said that even Americans who could afford the cost of surrogacy at home were coming to her, because Indian women "were free of vices, like alcohol, smoking and drugs." She said she receives around 10 e-mailed inquiries a day from childless couples abroad.
Under guidelines issued by the Indian Medical Council, surrogate mothers sign away all their rights to the child. In cases where the surrogate provides a womb for an embryo formed from the sperm and egg of the prospective parents, it is only the names of these genetic parents that appear on the birth certificate. If an egg donor is involved, her name does not appear on the document, either; only that of the father.
This eases the process of taking the baby out of the country. But for many, like Lisa Switzer, a 40-year-old medical technician from Texas whose twin babies are being carried by a surrogate mother from the clinic, the overwhelming attraction is the price.
"Doctors, lawyers, accountants, they can afford it, but the rest of us - the teachers, the nurses, the secretaries - we can't. Unless we go to India," she said.
Surrogacy is an area fraught with ethical uncertainties. Critics argue that the ease with which relatively rich foreigners are able to rent the wombs of poor Indians creates the potential for exploitation. Although the government is actively promoting India as a medical tourism destination, something about the exchange of money for babies has made many here uncomfortable.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development said in February that it was considering introducing legislation governing surrogacy, but this is not imminent. An article highlighting some of the concerns about the practice, published in The Times of India, questioned how such a law would be enforced: "In a country crippled by abject poverty, how will the government body guarantee that women will not agree to surrogacy just to be able to eat two square meals a day?"
Gher and his partner (who asked not to be named) have worked through their doubts and are certain they are doing a good thing.
"People can believe me when I say that if I could bear the baby myself I would," he said. "But this is a mutually beneficial answer. The surrogate gets a fair amount of money for being part of the process."
They are paying around $30,000, which includes flights, hotels and medical care. The surrogate is paid about 300,000 rupees, or $7,500.
"Surrogates do it to give their children better education, to buy a home, to start up a small business, a shop," said Kadam. "This is as much money as they could earn in maybe three years. I really don't think that this is exploiting the women. I feel it is two people who are helping out each other."
Gher agreed. "You cannot ignore the discrepancies between Indian poverty and Western wealth," he said. "We try our best not to abuse this power. Part of our choice to come here was the idea that there was an opportunity to help someone in India."
In the clinic, it is clear that an exchange between rich and poor is under way. On some of the contracts, the thumbprint of an illiterate surrogate stands out against the signature of the clients.
Although some Indian clinics allow surrogates and clients to meet, Gher said he prefers anonymity. When the woman gives birth later this year, he and his partner will be in the hospital, but not in the labor ward, and will be handed the baby by a nurse.
The surrogate mother does not know that she is working for foreigners and has not been told that the future parents are both men. Although the clinic advertises its gay-friendly credentials on its Web site, offering wombs to people who do not have them, homosexuality remains illegal in India.
Israel legalized adoption by same-sex couples in February, but surrogacy for same-sex couples is still not permitted. A fertility doctor recommended Rotunda, which made news last November when doctors there delivered twins for another gay Israeli couple.
Rotunda did not allow interviews with its surrogate mothers, but a 32-year-old woman at a fertility clinic in Delhi explained why she is embarking on her second surrogacy in two years.
Separated from her husband, she found that her monthly wages of 2,800 rupees as a midwife did not cover the expenses involved in raising her 9-year-old son. With the 550,000 rupees she earned from the first surrogacy, she bought a house. With the 350,000 rupees she expects from the second, for which she is negotiating with an American couple, she will be able to pay for her son's education. "I will save the money for my child's future," she said.
The process requires a degree of subterfuge in this socially conservative country. She has told her mother, who lives with her, but not her son or her neighbors.
So far, the experience of having a baby has been strangely virtual for the Israeli couple. Profiles of egg donors were sent by e-mail ("We picked the one with the highest level of education," Gher said), followed by additional information (a factory worker was rejected in favor of a housewife, who is presumed to have a less stressful lifestyle). Gher is posting updates about the process on Facebook. Soon ultrasounds of their developing child will start appearing in his inbox. Highly pixilated, blown-up passport photos of the egg donor and surrogate mother are pinned up on the wall of their apartment in Israel.
"We've been trying to half close our eyes and look at it in a more holistic way to imagine what she would actually look like," he said of the donor's blurred image. "These are women we don't know, will never know, who will become in a way part of our lives."

Out & about experience #2 – I love David Jones

2010-06-09T04:27:00.000-07:00

Out & about experience #2 – I love David Jones

For my American readers David Jones is an upscale department store. Probably kind of like Nordstrom or Bloomingdales.

So I’m having sleeping baby issues. Or more likely babies that don’t sleep. The girls have decided that the day naps – particularly the morning naps are optional. I can’t say I agree or approve of this notion as it pretty much makes the rest of the day hell. Hell does have a fury like a woman scorned, it’s grizzly twins… so anyway I was trying to find ways to combat said grizzlyness and I thought taking the girls into the city would be a good way to go (we seriously live about 20-30 minute walk from the CBD). So while I was walking in I thought it would be fun to surprise Larry at work – he always gets a kick out of seeing the girls during the day so we did a detour via his office.

This is always fun. The women at Larry’s office are fantastic. They always offer to watch the girls for a little bit while I go run a few errands, which is a very nice offer – when you’re not a massively over-protective parent like moi! So I said no – but I also expected that a double-wide pram would help deal with the lunchtime department store crowds (I’m not completely insane you know!).

So first stop is the Keihl’s counter to get some shaving cream for Larry. And then to find a cash register to pay for it. Is it just me or have Myer & David Jones on Bourke Street been getting renovated like forever? It seems they have for the 7 years I’ve been living in Melbourne. So I hand over the shaving cream and the pregnant cashier is lost in space staring at the girls for the next minute or so. It was very cute to watch. Then I turn around and there’s a semi-circle of about 5 clucky women all goo-ing and ga-ing over the girls. Which I also get a kick out of! It’s funny department stores seem to be filled with clucky women…

So next stop is homewares to get a wedding present for some friends. More women goo-ing and ga-ing over the girls. I also did something vaguely ambiguous. There were references made to my “wife” – now I didn’t say anything specific about whether I was married to a woman. I just indicated that I was married (I do wear a wedding band after all!). This always leaves me in a bit of a pickle. I know I should be out & proud and not hiding anything from the girls so the girls don’t grow up feeling like that we’re hiding anything or that our family is anything to be ashamed of. But at the same point in time I don’t want to have engage random strangers and explain the whole situation to them… it’s hard really.

Out and about experience #1

2010-06-08T03:05:00.000-07:00

These will be a short sharp blog posts about our experiences out and about. Probably more my over-reactions to stuff…

So take yesterday. I decided to take you guys to Westfield Southland. Well more so I decided to go to Southland to do something. And we needed to get some more suitable winter clothes for you guys. So I thought rather than deal with the dramas of trying to find a parking spot in the city – I’d go to Southland. I should have gone to the city – getting a parking spot would have been so much easier.

Allow me a brief diversion please readers. You really don’t appreciate how ridiculous parking spots are when your have to get babies out of either side of the car. I was knocking back perfectly good parking spots because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get one of the girls out.

So eventually we find a parking spot. The girls are in the stroller and we enter mall hell. Talk about confusing and how easy it is to get lost. But that’s not the point of this entry – it’s the comedy.

Now I understand the people who come and talk to us – they don’t know that after about an hour they are most likely the 10^th or so person who’s told me the exact same thing and asked me the exact same question. By the 10^th time I’m pretty much over it. Especially when it continues to happen for the next two hours. I may even get a little short and snappy about it all.

And to finish it all off. I lost the car. I couldn’t find where we had entered the bloody shopping centre. So I spent the next 20 minutes wandering up and down trying to find something that looked familiar so we could finally exit and get home.

And then of course someone had parked next to the car so getting one of you was next to impossible. Except Daddy backed the car out to get Olivia in to then only be told off by some woman in a cheap car which was of Korean origin that I was blocking her way. You know what – I didn’t really care. She was driving a Korean car, I felt sorry for her.

I'd like my mid-life crisis Porsche now please...

2010-06-07T00:22:00.000-07:00

I think I need a cheery, zany post to lift the mood of the past couple of posts. It’s gotten a touch serious really hasn’t it?

Let’s divert back to the now…

I’m struggling to find a spot where to pick up the thread of my story again. I guess even after all the revelations it’s a bit hard really.

So we’re back living in South Melbourne (the real estate shenanigans is another blog post or three) and I think your Dad is having a few problems adjusting to having a normal life again where he can’t vanish into a garden for 6 to 8 hours a day. So he’s gone slightly (not in a bad way) mental looking for a car. The Mini Cooper he did have was sold – we don’t need two cars, we really don’t, we can justify having two cars.

With the baby seats in my car, it’s basically become a two seater as the middle seat between the baby seats is basically inaccessible. Trust me – I’ve had to clamber back there a few times to feed you both! It’s not easy squeezing back there and then trying to squeeze back out.

We’ve traipsed around parts of Melbourne looking at cars, from Japanese import 300ZXs in overly flamboyant paint schemes (the bright oranage one was a looker) to older BMWs and Volvos.

Let me just ask the question here – which interior car designer feels that it’s a good idea to put a black wheel centre in a beige interior? Swedes are supposed to be known for stylish design. I’m guessing in the late 1990s-early 2000s someone at Volvo missed that memo. Although Peter Horbury was designing at Volvo then and he is British so that may explain it.

Anyway, so there’s a car dealer in the back of Port Melbourne that your father wanted to have a look at some cars at… one of which was the aforementioned Volvo & a BMW. We had also arranged to meet your Uncle Mike for lunch. As per usual your father and I were running late (you will just learn that running late is a fact of life for this family – I’ll resent it and your father will just tell me to relax and go with the flow), so he asked us to go meet your Uncle Mike at the Café we were supposed to meet him at and he’d meet us there.

Your father showed up in a Porsche Boxster. I had never driven a Porsche before. I actually managed to get through lunch before I asked your father for the keys. I took Louise out with me to have a look at it – she was on my lap at the time. I then waited until after your father had finished eating before I took the Porsche for a drive. I was very much smitten with it (this is pretty much an understatement), I did ask your father if we could buy it and we did seriously consider it for about 5 minutes before reality sank in.

I told your Uncle Mike on Sunday when we were trying to take photos of his car for sale that I would like my mid-life crisis Porsche now please…

So no Porsche :(

Although it was an entertaining afternoon looking at cars and you both did seem to enjoy it.

a very honest blog post...

2010-06-03T01:03:00.000-07:00

I debated about actually posting this so very publicly!

My early adult years were filled with me losing weight (I was obese when I finished High School) and questioning my own sexual identity. It’s funny I’ve always wondered if straight people have to question their own sexual identity. I suspect not. But they also tend not to grow up in an environment where they are the minority or viewed as ‘wrong’ on some level.

So my body issues. It seems like the longest battle of my life. I’m still fighting them to this day. I do honestly hope that we can instil in you both an understanding and an appreciation that you are just fine the way you are. It has taken me a very long time to come to terms with that.

I was a pretty sporty kid. Mostly because you’re Oma made me. I had swimming during summer (6 days a week), Judo two nights a week. In winter, I had judo 2 nights, tennis 1 night a week (I still hate tennis!), and rugby league twice a week. Once your Oma left, I basically dropped all sport and became a fat kid. And I mean fat… it was almost embarrassing but I really didn’t care. I was surprised when I went over 100kgs and it was like oh so this is what being 100kgs is being like. It didn’t really phase me.

I think to be honest my battle was more with self-esteem than body image. I think my mother leaving at such an early age didn’t really do much for my self-esteem and it did leave some lasting scars that I am still trying to work through.

Eventually in my later teen years and once I moved out of home I started losing weight – I went from 128kgs to about 78kgs. So from one extreme to the other - too fat too far too skinny. In my late 20s I discovered a couple of things – a gym. I went nuts – I was working out about 7 days a week and I got the results to show for it. I also discovered drugs. That’s not such a high point in my life and introduced an entirely now battle.

I hope I am never hypocritical enough to tell you to not do drugs – I can’t tell you not to. I have a history with them. I had a huge problem with them (it was one of the reasons why I decided to move to Melbourne). So chances are I will never tell you not to do drugs – I will just tell you to be careful! Know what you are doing, know the effects, the drawbacks and please be honest enough to talk to me about it. I do hope I will never be some scary “parent” that you feel you can never talk to.

Back to where I was… I was training for a corporate triathlon, it was probably one of the most challenging, rewarding things I have ever done. The actual triathlon was a bit of a letdown to be honest. We did kind of badly. But it’s probably the fittest and healthiest I had ever been in my life. I was vegetarian, working out 7 days a week (weights), running 5 days a week, swimming 5 days a week (badly!), I wasn’t drinking. I was so puritanical that in hindsight I almost disgust myself ;)

Anyway I did the triathlon, felt the massive sense of achievement that came from it and decided to start celebrating and having a bit of a life again. I started drinking again. And I was introduced to speed. At the time speed was so cheap it was crazy. And thereby started my drug frenzy. I would go on 3 day benders strung out on speed, MDMA and base. I wasn’t a huge fan of pills (ecstasy) – not sure why but I wasn’t. It became an addiction to the point where I was starting to do drugs during the week – just for kicks. And I wasn’t snorting anymore – I was injecting – which to me was always the one line I would never, ever cross. I crossed it and I found myself wanting more and more and more and more… Fortunately, I was completely and absolutely flat broke so my habit had to stop. It became such a low point in my life – I did some seriously fucked stuff, I cost myself some very good friends, I still regret that to this day.

I still remember when my contract ended with a company, I decided to go on a 3 day bender with an 8-ball. A friend was having her engagement party on the Sunday afternoon. I was a complete and absolute incoherent wreck to the point where she basically asked me to not show up at the wedding on anything!

That should have been a wake-up call. Unfortunately it wasn’t! I showed up for the wedding clean – sober I wasn’t – the drunkest I have ever been in my life! 3 day hangover… my friend married a scot so we all wore kilts, I had sequined hotpants on underneath my kilt – which I had worn to Mardi Gras – as I was asked to wear them. There are photos I’ve seen from the wedding of me flashing the whole wedding. I’m a classy kind of guy.

I forgot the keys to my apartment so fell asleep at the front gate. By the time my flatmate got home, I was lying in the gutter with the back of the kilt ridden up and my bum facing the busiest street in Brisbane. I had already taken the jacket, vest & shirt off due the heat.

I realised my addiction had spiralled out of control when I was having sex for drugs – I had developed a reputation that if you gave me drugs, I would have sex with you. Charming in hindsight, but that was the person I had become. So I decided (aided by looming unemployment induced poverty) to give the drugs up. It’s not an easy thing to do. The hardest thing I’ve had to give up has actually been cigarettes. And I will tell you not to smoke. That one I am prepared to be hypocritical about! So I gave up the drugs and the partying – I would say for a while but when I decided to stop the drugs, I also stopped partying in Brisbane. Fin – no more.

I was clean for about 18 months. I moved to Melbourne and started dabbling in a few things again. This time however, it didn’t get completely out of control. It wasn’t every weekend like it had been previously. It was once in a while. If I had everything to do over again - would I do the drugs? I really don't know. I can try be all sage and wise and say that this experience has made me part of who and what I am (which it has) but it has also made me realise that realistically I'm just a hedonist at my core.

The drinking though! My god. There’s another life long battle. Both my parents are alcoholics so I was pretty much genetically destined to have a drinking problem. I’ve been dealing with that for large chunks of my life too. That one probably is a different story as well!

So even after all the partying I did maintain a gym habit. I finally dropped all that a couple of years after I met your Dad. I decided that spending time with him was more important that spending time at the gym. I always swear that I will go back one day… but that day hasn’t come yet! And right now I am getting a fair bit of exercise from pushing you two around :) It’s funny since we moved back to the city a couple of months ago I’ve lost roughly 10kgs. It’s a combination of exercising more and not eating. I need to fix the not eating thing as I am falling back into some very dangerous old habits.

Parenting #101 – a diversion into the “now”

2010-06-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

Being a parent surprises me - constantly. Mostly for the depth of love that I feel for Louise and Olivia. I wanted to share this because I think for my development as a parent – it felt pretty significant.

The girls had their 6 months vaccinations today (2 months late – but that was my fault but as they’re prem it’s not that bad!). Now this is normally a bit of an ordeal anyway as the girls really don’t know the concept of “pain”. And here I am willingly leading them into an arena where they are going to be hurt. Which as a parent sucks! You are meant to protect them and I can understand the rationale that you need to cause them some pain to protect them.

So anyway. The girls are getting their shots done. I cried! With both of them – there was just so much I wanted to do to help, to take their pain away and I just couldn’t do it. All I could do was hold them and tell them it was going to be ok.

My poor little angels :(

And I am basically just a big softy! I realised that today too.

more about me!

2010-06-01T03:02:00.000-07:00

I hated high school. It wasn’t so much the being picked on or the fights (I got into a few fights – I’ve had anger issues a few times in my life). I was bored. A lot. High school really didn’t interest me that much. In part, maybe because my subject choices were wrong. Anyway, I bombed out in my senior year. I did really badly even to the point where I surprised myself (you would think I saw it coming, you would think so…). But I was disappointed. I couldn’t even get into the University of New England in Armadale (which used to have a reputation of being the easiest university to get into). So I decided to repeat Grade 12… at the same high school. Not one of my better ideas – really it wasn’t. So I had to deal with all the issues I dealt with all through high school. I got really, really, really bored this time round and I lasted a term before I dropped out and started looking for work.

I’m not really sure how history is going to record the recession “we had to have” – but being an uneducated, young school leaver trying to find work during a recession was hard - ridiculously hard. I got a piece of advice from an interview I went for; I can’t even remember what the job was. But the interviewer told me to go get an education. Get myself into university anyway I could. So I went and sat a matriculation exam to see if I could get myself into University, I was really nervous after I sat the exam that I changed my preferences from University to TAFE (to only find out later that I could have gotten into a University course with my results).

As I had about a 6 month wait till my TAFE course started I decided to pick up a couple of subjects to just give myself something to do. This basically started my career as a student… 4 years of full-time studying, 2 years at TAFE studying marketing and then 2 years at the Queensland University of Technology to get my Bachelor’s Degree. I decided at the end of my degree (with some urging from your Oma) to relocate to Western Australia (there’s another blog post in that!). We’ll chalk up another disaster. So I moved back to Brisbane after a couple of months and did some temping work while trying to start my career. I decided to go back to University to get my Honours in Marketing – for 2 reasons, 1 to prove to myself that I could do it (this became the more important reason) and 2 to give myself a point of differentiation in the workforce. There weren’t many marketing graduates running around with a Honours Degree. I can look back at it now and I think I understand why! I really enjoyed my Honours Degree – I enjoyed the discipline and the research (so much that one of my favourite jobs was being a corporate researcher – although my job title was Marketing Information Assistant, a bit of a generic title really).

In my entire working life I have never successfully gotten a job through an external interview. It’s always been a question of luck and the right temp assignment at the right place. Every job I have really enjoyed, I never interviewed for! The ones I hated were the ones I had an internal interview for and got. Weird hey? I’m sure this may change when I look at going back to work in a few years.

Eventually I ended up working for the directory people. I was there for nearly 8 years. Again started in what was a temp role - which was meant to be for 6 weeks. I had some reward roles and some really shocking roles. The first was probably the funniest – I was a Personal Assistant to a State Sales Manager. It was a love/hate relationship, she fired me three times and I quit three times (never mind at that point I really needed the money from that job). I needed a permanent job as temping was getting a little too uncertain and they had kind of made my job permanent – I just wouldn’t be answering to the State Manager anymore. This move to permanency also gave my move to Melbourne. I took the permanent job even though it meant less money and about 9 months in – my then boss offered me a transfer to Melbourne. I thought about it, I asked around for people’s opinions and I decided to do it! I loved Melbourne, absolutely loved it! I’d been down for training with work a couple of times and just found it amazing. It funnily enough felt like home – it just took me a couple of more years to truly find my home. I think part of the reason why I liked Melbourne so much is that as an outsider, you don’t feel like an outsider… Melbourne’s full of them!

The first diversion to me... (there will be more!)

2010-05-31T02:32:00.000-07:00

I’m going to take a bit of a diversion back to me. Because it’s all about ME goddammit! It’s not, but I want to give you a bit more understanding of me as a person. It’s taken me a very long time accept that I am in fact a rather complex person. I also feel some stupid need to explain my relationship to my parents (your Oma and deceased Opa).

So I was born in the Netherlands on the 5^th of December in the middle of the first blizzard of the season. There’s some mythology attached to this that I have never really been able to track down or make sense out of. And to be honest I never really figured it was that important. I never really liked snow that much anyway.

I spent nearly the first 8 years of my life in Rotterdam. And my only real clear distinct memory is of when I was learning how to ice skate. I saw a fish trapped in the ice of the canal we were learning to skate on and I was quite upset by this. I also remember it being quite beautiful, a gold coloured fish trapped in the ice and I seem to remember a rainbow on either the ice or the scales. I asked my father about it, as I was quite upset as to whether the fish would live when the ice defrosted.

He lied to me and told me that yes the fish would live and that fish would forever be a special fish as he survived the winter in the ice. I learnt much later that fish actually couldn’t survive being frozen. I also learnt that my father didn’t want me too upset so he basically fibbed to me. Your Opa was a gentle man and I think I learnt that too late in my life. He was also very generous and I hope that’s a quality I’ve acquired and a quality I can pass down to you both - I won't fool you though, my relationship with your grandfather wasn't perfect but I'll get to that later.

So anyway back to me!

Your grandparents (rather daftly) thought that to save their marriage, they could relocate to Brisbane. Suffice it to say, this wasn’t the best idea (they split 3 years later). My parents’ divorce was a defining moment in my life – the ramifications of which I am still feeling. I didn’t really have much to do with my mother after she left us. I think for a long time I tried to reconnect with her and it just wasn’t ever going to work. We are now well & truly estranged but I will save that particular story for a different blog post.

I grew up in Brisbane. I did call it home for many years. I didn’t ever particularly feel like I belonged there. I went through school always being different. Originally, I went through primary school being different because I had an accent and I was struggling to learn English. Then when my parents’ divorced, I was treated differently because we (your uncle & I) were amongst the first kids at our school to come from a divorced family. By the time we hit High School – divorce was a lot more common and it was actually surprising if people’s parents were still together. It’s funny how the world changes!

Then in high school – I was the fat, gay kid. So again I didn’t fit in and I couldn’t if I tried. I didn’t really particularly try either. I think there’s a part of me that felt comfortable being the odd one out. But being an outsider can be tough.

It’s funny, I just wrote the preceding paragraph and I had to acknowledge that I am still an outsider. I don’t really fit very neatly into very many categories at the moment. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. I always resented labels.

The start of the surrogacy story

2010-05-27T03:00:00.000-07:00

Most people visiting India are chasing a miracle of some description. I’m not really sure how many people actually achieve their miracles. We did – we’re amongst what I feel are the lucky ones and this will become the story of how we got our miracle(s).

I’m not really sure how this is going to turn out as a story. Most things I tend to be involved in have a slightly organic way of evolving into something so I probably should begin with myself. It’s probably the best place to begin.

I never expected to be here. I really didn’t. So this will probably also become my story and my story with Larry. Yay, a memoir. Am I self-important enough for a memoir? Probably not, but I am fabulous enough for one.

I don’t really know what I expected from my life. I spent a large part of my life just fumbling around – happily existing in what was effectively a very large rut. I did enjoy my rut I suppose. Apart from the work thing largely, I hated my job, I really did. But it paid reasonably well. First piece of advice girls, find something that you love and find something that you want to do for a very long time. Work is such an important part of your life – you have to find something that you love. We will try to help you with that give you a nudge here and a nudge there.

I was very fortunate in that I got a secondment into a job – I did actually enjoy, so I managed to get out of my rut. I was then about a year later made redundant – so I was given a nice tidy sum to basically never go back to that company. I was happy to take it. I did love the team I worked with and I do miss them at times.

I met your father, and he blew me away. He was everything I could ever want in a person. Smart, tall, handsome, funny, intelligent, good-looking, romantic, goofy. He did something incredibly sweet on our first date and I hope that when you find love – it’s this sort of love. We had dinner, he offered to drive me home because it was raining, we got out the front of my apartment complex, got out of the car and kissed me in the rain. At that point I kind of figured out he was a keeper (thankfully even after a some embarrassing personal revelations on the first date he decided I was a keeper as well!). As a father’s wish I do honestly hope that both of you find a love like this. I will love your farther until the day I die or the day he dies. We may kill each other first though – we have our problems but all couples do. Just don’t go to bed angry at each other! And do try to make each other laugh at least once a day. Laughter is seriously underrated in relationships. Although I do think your father spends more time laughing at me than laughing with me.

There’s so much more that I can tell you about my life but I won’t – life was an interesting journey for me it really was. I have made so many mistakes in my life – some I deeply regret and it’s partly my job as your father to help make sure you don’t make the same mistakes. You will make your own mistakes and I know you will but I will be here to help you with those too.

See I ramble… it will get worse (we’re nowhere near India yet!)

Our journey to creating a family wasn’t an easy one. It was a long one and one that crosses parts of the world. Sounds exotic and exciting doesn’t it? Originally, we looked at adopting a little girl from Vietnam (which entailed some shenanigans) and a couple of trips to India. Life is never dull girls – it’s really not!

So let’s start with Vietnam. Vietnam for me was so exciting. It was my first trip overseas since I went to Hong Kong in 2003. Your father was in the process of changing jobs and had some spare time and (unbeknownst to me at the time) he wanted to have a look at a few orphanages in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). The plan being at that point that “we” (your father) would adopt a child and we would raise her in Australia. There were a few problems with this – namely the red-tape made it next to impossible. Although we did enjoy touring through Vietnam (if you ever go avoid the war museum – it’s just a little too gruesome! Seriously!). Also I will let you into a funny moment. There’s a hotel in Saigon called the Rex Hotel, which is quite famous for the rooftop bar. So we decided to go have a few beers and dinner and see what it was all about. It was cool. The funny bit was as we were leaving. There’s a taxi driver standing at the bottom of the lift. Your father walks out – hey Joe, I can get you what want – girl, boy! Your Dad, just shook his head and said no thanks. The guy looks at me and says hey mister – I can get boy for you. I was slightly mortified – apparently even when we travel overseas I’m quite obviously what I am…

So the adoption route was closed to us. We weren’t really sure what we were going to do and we did want to create a family more than anything on this world.

In 2008, your Dad was coming home from a business trip to London (he travels a lot!). He came across an article in the International Herald Tribune that discussed surrogacy in India. We had considered surrogacy in the US but it’s expensive – unfortunately, really expensive. We couldn’t afford it. And suddenly the option of something cheaper and more affordable came up. There was a way that we could create our family.

12 months in photos

2009-12-24T02:45:00.000-08:00

This is shamelessly stolen from a forum I frequent but I thought that this could be an interesting blog - I could be wrong but what they hey! At least here I also get to expand on the photos and the processes behind it...

so let's go...

January

This photo was part part of the Melbourne Silvermine's Australia Day Challenge (theme being "girt"). I was wandering around the back garden with the disposable camera and some of the daisies were in bloom so I though what if... and here's the result.

February

This is one of those "fluke" shots. I love this photo. This was our tour guide in Varanassi, he was taking me someplace I can't remember where - he was taking me around Varanassi while Larry was with a Guru. And I grabbed this shot with my iPhone for me it just works and it shows the colour and vibrancy that can be India.

March

This was an interesting month for me. The 300D I had been using for nearly 3 years died and I bought a replacement (my now very cherished 40D) and I'm a car nerd. So the Melbourne International Motorshow + new camera = perfect opportunity. I was really looking forward to seeing the BMW M1 Homage and I was blown away by it. This is probably one of my favourite shots of it. It's not technically brilliant but I like it.

April

Huzzah! Holga! A double exposure of the view from the rooftop terrace from our townhouse in Port Melbourne. I love the almost "end of the world" feel to this. Part of what I love about photography is that I can play. Part of what I really love about the holga is that you can play with double exposures (and triple etc...)

May

I love food & I love cooking. I didn't take many photos in May and this is the best I think out of the photos I did take in May. And also one of the first times I made cupcakes...

June

A lot of what drives me in life is curiosity and one of the things in photography I have been curious about is HDR. This is one of my better HDR images (again of the view from the townhouse roof), I have a few better, namely from the motorshow but as that was in March - they don't count ;)

July

I bought a vintage film camera. A 1954 Super Ikonta (it's a folding camera) which is just seriously a thing of beauty! I carried this camera around more than I did the 40D. This photo is on the road between Trentham & Kyneton. I went through a brief spate of standing in the middle of the road to take photos...

August

This is one of those 'lucky' shots. I saw the tape around the bottom of the parking meter and grabbed the ikonta and went for it... really happy with how this came out :)

September

I was made redunant, I had time on my hands and I had new lenses. So I did something else I had been curious about for a while. I made my own lightbox. I also like geeky toys so the two seemed to be a perfect fit (this was shot using my 60mm macro lens).

October

We were in India for the girls and the Ramada Powai had diwali celebrations that we were invited to. This is again just one of those photos. I didn't expect it to turn out as I was shooting in AV in low light and that normally causes issues (as the 17-85 lens isn't that fast). But this to me pretty much sums up Diwali.

November

More fun with the macro lens. I was feeling rather hideous in terms of photography in both October and November as I only really felt I was taking photos of the girls. So I decided to take my macro lens outside into the garden and see what I could do. I guess also many people do forget there's an underside to flowers. This is one of the numerous daisies we have growing here in the backyard. I love the gardens here :)

December

It had to be a Christmas shot. We got some goofy santa hats for the girls and I had already done a shot with Cookie Monster in a santa hat and I was baking cookies (originally it was a christmas bbq at the bowls club but the cookies didn't last that long!). So I thought about doing a shot with cookies and milk for Santa... with the tree in the background. I had the brilliant idea of teaming it with Cookie Monster in his santa hat. This is probably one of the images I'm the happiest with.

chickpea, brown rice & spinach pilaf

2009-11-15T10:48:00.001-08:00

chickpea, brown rice & spinach pilaf, originally uploaded by nettsu.

2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
2 x 250g packets microwave brown rice
400g can chickpeas, rinsed, drained
1 cup (250ml) chicken or vegetable stock
120g baby spinach leaves
1/2 cup (55g) raisins

Heat the oil in saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, spices, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for 10 minutes or until the rice is softened. Add the rice, chickpeas and stock, bring to the boil over high heat, then reduce heat to medium, cover & simmer for 5 minutes ot until the rice is cooked through. Remove the pan from heat, stir in spinach and raisins. Cover, stand for 5 minutes to wilt spinach slightly, then serve.

this was very tasty and really quite simple/fast to make. Will definitely be making it again :)

Tuscan Bean Soup with Crunchy Croutons

2009-11-07T18:15:00.001-08:00

Tuscan Bean Soup with Crunchy Croutons, originally uploaded by nettsu.

I love italian style cooking it's so simple & so very tasty!

Soup
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled & chopped finely
leaves from 3 to 4 sprigs fresh thyme
4 x 420g cans cannellini beans (I used organic)
1 litre vegetable stock
cracked black pepper & fresh flat-leaf parsley to serve (I skipped these0

1. Heat oil in frying pan and gently fry onion, thyme, garlic for 3 to 4 minutes (I chose to do this in the frypan to increase flavour & save on dishes). Drain cannellini beans and rise well with cold water.
2. Transfer onion, thyme & garlic to saucepan, add beans, stock and cook over a medium heat for about 5 minutes.
3. Using blender or food processor, roughly puree soup. Season to taste. Serve garnished with croutons & parsley.

The croutons
The recipe I used has it's own version of how to make croutons. But I have my own method (comes from watching far too many cooking shows!). Cut or rip bread into pieces (i've used the bread I use for sandwiches & toast). Place on baking tray, drizzle with good quality olive oil and season with salt & pepper. The salt will help draw extra moisture out of the bread and make for crunchier croutons.

Linguine with Crab & Lemon

2009-11-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

300g dried linguine 2 tsp salt plus extra 250g cooked crabmeat Handful baby rocket (argula) leaves 1 tbsp grated lemon zest 1 tbsp salted baby capers, rinsed Lemon Sauce 1/2 cup chicken stock (I used vegetable stock) 2 tbsp lemon juice salt & cracked black pepper 50g chilled butter diced 2 tbsp cream or creme fraiche 1. Bring saucepan of water to boil. add 2 tbsp salt and pasta, cook for 8 minutes or until pasta is al dente. 2. Meanwhile, make sauce. Bring stock to boil in saucepan. While whisking, add lemon juice, salt & pepper. Over gentle heat, whisk in chilled butter, a few pieces at a time, without allowing the sauce to boil. Stir in cream or creme fraiche. 3. Drain pasta, keeping aside a cupful of cooking water. 4. Add pasta, cupful of cooking water, crabmeat, rocket, lemon zest, capers, salt & pepper to sauce. Toss lightly until rocket has wilted and pasta is well coated.

Asiatic Lily

2009-09-25T02:50:00.001-07:00

Asiatic Lily, originally uploaded by nettsu.

I bought new lenses w00t!!!

I used part of my redundancy payment to finally buy myself some new glass!

It's funny - I was thinking when was the last time I bought a new lens (apart from a kit lens). And it was the 50mm f1.8 that I bought when I was given the 300D over 3 years ago... shocking isn't it?

So I bought myself the 50mm f1.4 and a macro lens (60mm f2.8) and so far I have to say I am very happy with both :)

yay!

a non-photo post!

2009-09-13T00:56:00.000-07:00

I guess also now that I have more time on my hands (at least temporarily) I may try to blog a bit more frequently...

I'm in the throes of finally doing my tax return - I've avoided this for nearly 2 months - I thought it was time to do it. Although I am still scared I will end up with a tax debt (I seem to every year!).

So anyways...

I came across this interesting little definition -

"Your spouse is your husband or wife to whom you are legally married, or a person who lives with you on a genuine domestic basis as your husband or wife. It does not include someone who is the same sex as you.

For 2009-1o and later years, a spouse will also include a person of the same sex who is in a relationship with you that is registered under a prescribed state or territory law (my emphasis) or who you live with on a genuine domestic basis."

Now I'm a little confused here... if it is a "registered" relationship (which ours is) then why not just allow gay marriage?

Seriously is it that different?

Dangerous

2009-08-24T18:17:00.001-07:00

Dangerous, originally uploaded by nettsu.

I'm still struggling with the whole idea of shooting film. I think maybe its because I'm still in too much of a digital mindset. Digital is easier... there's a delete option ;) and you also know pretty much whether something is in focus.

Anyways...
this is probably the shot I'm the happiest with out of the last bunch :)

It's funny I also shot a roll through my holga - they all (apart from two) were pretty much crap. it's funny how fast you can fall out of being comfortable and familiar with something to having to struggle with it again.

c'est la vie really :)

all good things come to an end

2009-08-20T18:45:00.001-07:00

the end of unsensored09, originally uploaded by nettsu.

The end of another exhibition for me :) and I guess by extension the whole silvermine.

This is probably one of the best exhibitions I have been involved with. The crew behind it all (and I don't mean the committee - I mean the whole silvermine) has been fantastic.

Was really great to see so many sales
Yes I'm disappointed mine didn't sell but c'est la vie - I can't have everything. Exhibiting in itself is reward enough.

The melbourne silvermine -> http://silvermine.org.au/

panoramas go bananas

2009-07-27T15:21:00.001-07:00

View from Hanging Rock, originally uploaded by nettsu.

I love panoramas
I do
I'm not really sure how much talent they require as a photographer to be honest. But there is just something magical about watching a whole series of images come together into one big image.

I have a problem now. I love autostitch. It's the simplest and most effective panorama software I've used. But now I have the macbook pro and guess what there's no autostitch available :( This makes me a little sad. I actually have a couple of panoramas from the weekend that need processing.

So anyways... I did some asking around on twitter for the best pano software for macs. I got 3 options - 2 free and 1 paid. So being the cheap bastard I am I tried the two free ones. Hugins & doubletake. I've deleted both of them of the mac. I don't understand them. So in terms of ease of use they failed for me - badly. I need something easy to use! I'm a mac n00b... I may end up investigating AutoPanoPro further which was the third suggestion.

Or just bringing the images into work and using my work machine to process the panos... that's the other option as it has autostitch.

Unintentional Mis-Adventures in Cross-Processing

2009-07-22T15:36:00.001-07:00

big wheel keep on turning... NOT!!!, originally uploaded by nettsu.

There's a story here... like most things in my life *laughs*

My friend Wade sent me some Fuji Provia 100 which was very sweet of him. So anyways... I shot two rolls (I have 3 left) and dropped them off at my usual lab on Elizabeth Street. I've got a cold so I'm not thinking clearly... bit of an off-tangent comment but it will make sense. So the guy tells me they can't process they Provia as it's slide film. I didn't realise it was slide film. I just thought it was 120 film and that it was like the kodak film I normally use - obviously it's not. I'm really a bit niave at the best of times. So anyways, the guy at the lab says they can cross-process the film as C-41. Now at this point there should have been a little voice in my head going - MICHAEL STOP!!!!!!!! CROSS-PROCESSING GIVES WACKY RESULTS!!!! so I said ok... not realising what I just said ok to... so walking back the office... it dawned on me that I just agreed to process slide film as normal film... I got nervous :(

But here's one of the outcomes
Notch it up as another happy accident in a series of continuing happy accidents :)

UNSENSORED09

2009-07-12T19:54:00.001-07:00

UNSENSORED09, originally uploaded by nettsu.

The irony as I post this blog entry...

Most of the folks who read my blog are probably involved in this... anyhoo

I'm exhibiting
yay!
I'm exhibiting my first analogue photo
yay!
I have the prints
yay!
I left the prints in Trentham
boo!
I was going to get the local framer to do the framing for me. I was going to see him on Saturday and I forgot
boo!

So I now have added some stress onto getting them framed and delivered... I will see if he's open on Saturday and how fast he can turn them around for me

YAY!!!

The 'Keets

2009-07-05T18:36:00.001-07:00

The 'Keets, originally uploaded by nettsu.

Playing around with updated camerabag.

I haven't had the time to process any photos from the weekend yet. Mostly just food photos... I've got 5 rolls of film to be developed though.

So expect a flickr flood in the next couple of days :)

2005 Volvo V70 HDR

2009-06-30T13:23:00.001-07:00

2005 Volvo V70 HDR, originally uploaded by nettsu.

Just testing the flickr/blogger interface :)
oh and I just wanted to blog this photo ;) more expirements with HDR - i should stop at some stage. I'm really happy with the this photo - I love how the reflections on the bonnet came out. The only thing that kind of bugs me is that I took the photo too early in the morning so there's still some dew/frost on the windscreen & the roof which makes it all look a little flat.

Ah well - it's all part of the fun of being a photographer :)

Another Food Post - Peanut Butter Pie

2009-06-25T17:02:00.000-07:00

I think I'm becoming obsessed with food... I really do.

So anyways. We had dinner at a friends earlier this week, and I decided to bring dessert. So I went through my magazine & recipe collection and noticed a recipe for Peanut Butter Pie. Larry loves Peanut Butter so I though a-ha I'll give this a go as yes well you know he likes Peanut Butter... (and everyone else seems to as well).

Here's the end result:

Recipe:
Peanut Butter Pie
Serves 16

180g Digestive Biscuits
90g unsalted butter
3 tsp caster sugar

Filling
1 cup (250ml) pure (thin) cream
1/2 cup (75g) caster sugar
320g cream cheese, chopped, at room tempature
375g crunchy salt-free peanut butter

Topping
150ml thickened cream
150g dark couverture chocolate (70% cocoa solids), chopped
20g unsalted butter

Preheat fan-forced oven to 160 (180 for a conventional oven)
Process biscuits in a food processor until crumbled. Add melted butter and sugar. Pulse to combine. Then press into the base of a 22cm springform cake pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

For the filling, place the cream and sugar in a saucepan and simmer over low heat for 3-4 minutes, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Blend the cream cheese and peanut butter until combined. Add the cream mixture and pulse to combine, then spoon filling on top of pie crust and leave to cool.

For the topping, bring the cream to just below boiling point in a saucepan over high heat, then remove the pan from the heat. Place chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl, then pour over the hot cream. Leave for 3 minutes without touching. Gently move the dish around to melt the chocolate and butter into the cream. Pour the topping over the pie, then chill in the fridge, uncovered, for 4 hours or until set.

This is originally from the book maggie's kitchen and it then appeared in Delicious (small story about this to follow).

So a couple of things
This is so bloody rich - very, very tasty though!
I burnt the base :( - I had it in the enough to long so there wasn't really much of a base with the actual pie... live & learn I suppose.

So the funny little story - I got a kick out of this... when I was making the pie on Tuesday night - I was posting photos to twitter, as well it's not unlike me to overshare the intimate details of my life really... one of my followers is a photographer for penguin books who published Maggie's Kitchen and delicious reused the images. So he recognised his own photo :) I just thought that was kind of cool in a small world kind of way.

the 2nd batch from the super ikonta

2009-06-17T21:35:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm...
not sure what to say really
I think getting used to composing with the super ikonta is taking some time. Dropped 4 rolls off earlier this week at the Elizabeth Street Camera Centre. And after a misunderstanding (err???) there was a note for them to be scanned to CD, I had to wait for them to be scanned to CD, they did a bad scan :( I originally thought it was an issue with the camera but after some advice no. It's my lab. That sucks. I know have to try to find a new lab to do the developing and scanning for me.

Anyways
here's the photo I'm the happiest with
Compositionally it could have been a bit stronger - I should have moved to the right slightly but the main thing I was after was the reflection of Eureka in the seat. Which I got. The passing traffic & the tram were just bonuses :)

Also had my first 2 rolls of B&W film dropped off for developing.
That's a challenge.
I like the gritty feel of B&W through the super ikonta. Much better than shooting b&w in the holga. Only issue I really have is that it seems over-exposed. Which is probably to do with my lack of understanding with the camera....

a brief food interlude...

2009-06-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

Namely as I haven't had the chance to pick up my developed films yet :(
I was intending my next post to be about my first B&W rolls through the super ikonta but you'll have to wait...

so anyways...
Last week when I was grabbing some lunch from Woolies (Safeway) at QV - I noticed the current Donna Hay magazine. Now I'm not particularly a Donna Hay fan - maybe it has something to do with the Courier-Mail/Daily Telegraph syndication. Maybe it's because I don't find her stuff usually that inspiring (although the food styling & photography is normally pretty good).

So anyway I decided to make her sticky date pudding from the current issue.

The end result:

Let's just talk about rich! The amount of butter in this pudding is somewhat scary...

The recipe:

2 1/2 cups (210g) chopped pitted dates
1 cup (250ml) boiling water
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of (baking) soda
100g butter, chopped
3/4 cup (135g) brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup (150g) self-raising (self-rising) flour

toffee sauce
150g butter (chopped)
1 cup single (pouring) cream
1 1/2 cups (265g) brown sugar

preheat oven to 180C (355F). Place the dates, water and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl and allow to stand for 5 minutes. Place the date mixture in the bowl of a food processor with the butter and sugar and process until just combined. Add the eggs and flour and process until just combined. Pour into a lightly greased tin lined with non-stick baking paper. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes. Cut into squares.

Watching the dates, baking soda & water fizz was fun :) It was like science at work

To make toffee sauce, place butter, cream and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat and stir until butter is melted. Bring to the boil and cook for 5 minutes or until thickened slightly. Spoon over puddings and top with cream.

Boil butter & cream - is this person crazy!!!! But it does work - it's just a case of standing there and waiting for the worst!

Not sure if I will make it again due mostly to the richness... but as I never made it before - it was interesting...

Getting a coffee hit

2009-06-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

It's quite rare for me to consider and plan an image. And I guess this does tie into my attempts to be more of an aristic photographer rather than just seeing something and snapping it.

So anyway a flickr friend yesterday posted a shot of his starbucks coffee and referred to it "liquid crack." I'll save the starbucks rant for a different time (but seriously America - STARBUCKS IS SH1T!!!!) so based on the addictive nature of caffeine and corporate america, I came up with the rough idea for this image. The only regret I really have about it is the lighting. The lighting should be better but the image still works.

I was actually a bit nervous about uploading it as it's a tough image to deal with in some respects.

The reactions have been quite interesting. The main problem is that as my flickr is linked to my facebook - a few people at work have seen me snorting espresso.

One of my managers actually finds it disturbing. The other manager said that I need to keep in mind that I am supposed to becoming a responsible parent (that one was a bit what the?).

Now I'm not usually in the habit of having to explain myself at work in terms of my 'art' - but I don't think the people at work see me as an artist. They see me as a photographer. The difference being that I take good photos rather than create good images. This falls into the create image camp.

I stand by my image and I stand by my artistic expression :)
I like this - it's not perfect - but it works as an image
it's funny and it's a statement on a few levels

Have a good weekend
Peace
Michael

The Super Ikonta

2009-06-04T15:11:00.000-07:00

Is just super!

I still have no idea of how to use it - I'm using the red dot method (it's like "auto" until I manage to work out just in the hell I'm supposed to use the f-stops and the focus ring...). It's weird really - I've read the manual 3 times and it still makes no sense...

I have to admit for a 55 year old camera - I am really quite impressed by the quality of the images it produces.

As my lab doesn't do the auto-level thing - I generally do auto-levels in PS. I have some getting learning to do with it as well - I need to learn how to compose etc - there's a couple of shots which there are bits on the edge that realistically shouldn't be there. But that's the learning process really ;)

It's funny - I also now carry film with me... I have a roll of B&W and 160VC in my bag...

So I bought a new toy

2009-05-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

So I've been thinking about getting more serious about film photography for a while. So after some deliberation and a slight impulse - I'm the now over-excited owner of a 1954 Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta IV. It's gorgeous! I have absolutely no idea of how to use it yet but I do have the manual. So yes... I'll try shooting a roll of film this weekend and see how I go.

My new baby :)

The Spud Hut Mystery

2009-05-24T15:16:00.000-07:00

This weekend just gone was the Trentham Spud Fest. Trentham is pretty much potato country and it has a history steeped in growing spuds. The soil around Trentham is just fantastic (as I think can be witnessed by the beautiful garden we have at Meran Vale). As part of the spud fest - there's a tour of what are called Spud Huts. I think at the height there was 84 or so Spud Huts around Trentham and surrounds. Potatoes were big once! So Larry & I were at the Mechanics Institute checking out the spud displays and there was a display on the Spud Huts and we went looking to see if our Spud Hut was indicated.

No.

So we informed the local historian that we did in fact have a Spud Hut on our property. She didn't quite believe us to start with. So we all trotted over to the house to let the local historians have a quick look at the hut. We do indeed have a Spud Hut on our property.

Brief Explanation Time:
A Spud Hut is a dwelling (normally about 2.5 metres by 3 metres) were potato pickers would stay during potato picking season. The majority were built in the mid to late 1800s. Unfortunately most have fallen into various states of disrepair :(

So back to the mystery... they're not sure where our Spud Hut is from. There's a suspicion that it may have been moved in from an out-lying property. It's been on the property before the people before us. So it's been there at least 6 years if not more. I'm actually now quite curious to find out what the story is! :)

CS3 HDR vs Photomatix HDR

2009-05-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

Or is it a case of HDR vs Tone Mapping?

So I finally got around to processing some images in Photomatix that I had already used photoshop for. So basically a HDR that I had done in CS3 - I've also now done in Photomatix. So here's image 1:

I liked this when I first did it - it was one of my favourite images from the motorshow that wasn't of the M1 Homage.

So last night I did the photomatix magic on the same 3 photos (all were bracketed -2, 0, +2)

I like the photomatix version over the photoshop version. I wasn't expecting to as I've struggled a bit with photomatix and tone mapping. I won't call it HDR as the HDR image in Photomatix would be pretty much the same as the HDR image in photoshop.

So my conclusions on all this:
Generally not a fan of tone-mapping you can use it to create interesting looking images but photomatix is too fiddly to get something that looks "realistic". The eye-bleeding tone-mapping is easy enough (but why would you want to?). I'm not going to get into a discussion of the nature of tone-mapped HDRs - I understand what art is about and I firmly believe each to their own.

CS3 when creating HDRs is very resource heavy & slow, photomatix is much faster. I will probably use photomatix over CS3 to be honest - namely for the speed. I will just have to continue struggling with trying to create realistic looking HDR images. Or I could just stop playing with HDR.

Craftsman or Artist?

2009-05-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

This is something I've been thinking about and talking to Larry about a bit as well.

I like to think of myself as an artist. I don't know necessarily if I am though. The main point seems to be that I take photos of how I see the world. I don't create images as such (at times I do but its still how I see the world).

So I am trying to think if I should... should I start creating images, should I turn one of the sheds or part of the shed into a studio. Which then means I have to learn about lighting...

yikes!!!

So I jumped back on the HDR treadmill...

2009-05-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

Why I don't know...

But I was looking at some of the HDR stuff that photoshop was producing and it just didn't look "right". Now I have always been a little bit scared off by photomatix (namely for the eye-bleeding HDRs that people tend to produce - yes I know it's tone-mapping that causes the eye-bleeding look not the actual HDR).

Although as a little aside - some of the HDR discussion forums on flickr are a scream. It's like the old days of internet bullying. There's so much hate for the eye-bleeding HDRs (which I can understand) but there's a valid arguement for them being artistic endeavours...

Anyhoo...
So I gave my copy of Photomatix a spin and I have to say I don't hate the results. It does make camera shake a lot more obvious though, which there is probably a way to reduce that too (a tripod probably)

So there you go :)
I might re-process some of my earlier photoshop HDRs in Photomatix to see what happens with the tone-mapping.

I'll do a compare & contrast next week :)

loss of mojo

2009-05-07T17:06:00.000-07:00

Hi :)

Seems funny doesn't it - I'm having major mojo issues all round. No photography mojo... no blogging mojo. No real mojo...

I think I've been that stressed out about my mother visiting that mojo just vanished completely. Mother visiting was fine. There's a whole series of blog posts in that but I won't go into that much detail. It was what it was. An awkward and strange reunion. She's happy though - so I guess that's one of the main things.

Now the photo mojo. I haven't taken any digital pics apart from my phone cam. This is in part based on something Larry said, I try to be an artist and I want to be an artist but for me to be an artist, I need to create images and not just shoot the world as I see it. I guess this is what threw a spanner in my mojo works. I actually had to stop and think about this... it's strange really. Now I look at my 40D and not sure where to go with it or what to do with it.

It's not like I'm not taking any photos. I got my lomo fisheye a couple of weeks ago and I've been going mental with that. Who knew that a toy camera could be so much fun! I'm loving it!!! I guess toy cameras do encourage you to shoot the world as you see it. Although with the wide-angle lens you get some wacky and rather odd results. At least I've learnt to keep my fingers out of the focal range now ;)

general lack of motivation

2009-04-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

it's funny really
i'm generally demotived
- not motivated to blog
- feeling a real lack of creativity to take photos
just general :meh:ness

so :meh:

oh & hi :)
will try to more regularly blog again

HDR Photos

2009-04-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

Ok I guess this in part comes from a question from a friend what HDR is (has to do with a tweet I made last night about doing some HDR processing of some photos of my car - which mostly sucked btw... maybe I should go for the eye-bleeding tonemapping).

Anyway he asked what HDR was... So I'm being a real geek and sending him an email to explain it ^_^

Ok
To further explain HDR we shall consult wikipedia ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging
it explains it better than I could
and a couple of examples from me
non-HDR image

so this is just the "normal" exposure

the HDR version

To my mind HDR doesn't much accept correct some issues with over and under exposure - so it basically provides a more balanced image. This is probably completely & totally inaccurate but I can live with that - its what I think that's important in terms of my own work ;)

So here's the best out of 4 HDR photos I did last night...

I think I'm going to give HDR a rest - I don't see the benefit behind it really... either that or I am completely missing the point.

iPhones & Me

2009-04-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

Ok let's get to the point
I love my iPhone - I probably shouldn't love a piece of materialistic technology but I love it...

so anyways!
I'm on iPhone #3. This is quite funny. I've had an iPhone since July last year - so not even a year and I'm on my third one... erm... yeah I don't know either.

So iPhone #1 met its untimely death when we returned from India. It worked absolutely fine in India - get back to Australia and nope... can't make or receive calls. Take into my telco provider - they suggest a restore - so I restore - nope, still no ability to make or receive calls - the internet & text works fine. So back to telco - woohoo, NEW PHONE! Seems there was a hardware issue. So I get shiney new iPhone... whee!!!!

Fast forward a month or so...
I was showing Larry something on my iPhone as a demo as to what he could do. Went to put it back on the duchess and I wasn't watching...
Phone drops onto polished floor - EEK!!!!!!
I was crushed :(
Screen no longer work...
So back to Telco - with damaged iPhone and a long face to enquire about replacement phones. I was expecting this was going to cost $$$. I gets me a shiney new iPhone for free - NADA - zip - ZILCH. How? I still don't know myself but as there was "no physical damage" it was a manufacturing fault... I'm guessing because the phone didn't look like it had been dropped I got another new one on warranty...

Cool huh?
I'm also accepting that I am quite lucky when it comes to iPhones. I also expect that my luck will run out so I've ordered a protective case to try to protect my iPhone #3 (and I did actually consider naming it iPhone #3).

Look wallpaper!

Have a great weekend!

Home & Away - Lesbian Kiss!!!

2009-03-31T15:12:00.001-07:00

Shock!
Horror!
Scandal!

FFS who really cares... this seems to be more of media frenzy than anything else and part of what really amuses me. There was a public kiss in at Federation Square last night.

Although hundreds were expected, about 20 people - gay and straight - gathered and locked lips as the soap went to air.

And further,

She said she was disappointed that some gay people did not go to the the "big communal pash'' at Federation Square because they were concerned for their jobs.

"A lot of my friends didn't show up to tonight's event, or didn't want to show up ... because they were afraid to be photographed,'' she said.

"And they work in the public sector, or with children, or as teachers, and were very afraid of their faces being shown in that regard.''

I can in part understand this aspect... but did she maybe consider that either a) people really really don't care - I mean it is Home & Away after all... who still watches that? or b) people had better things to do on a Tuesday night.

It's a strange world at times isn't it?

Government gets tough on executive salaries

2009-03-17T21:33:00.001-07:00

I'm going to cut & paste from a forum post (sorry but I'm being lazy!)

I don't get this government - I really don't...

Welcome to Ruddonomics...

Quote:

Originally Posted by theaustralian

WAYNE Swan has dramatically moved to curb executive salaries by moving to cap the level of "golden handshakes" available to departing company directors.
Treasurer Wayne Swan

Speaking this afternoon, the Treasurer announced that shareholder approval would now be required where a golden handshake to a departing executive exceeded one year's base salary.

The current law had allowed termination payments to reach up to seven times a director's total annual remuneration package before shareholder approval was required.

Mr Swan issued a blunt warning to executives to match company performance with remuneration.

“The Government does expect you to do the right thing by the community or the country,” Mr Swan said.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...68-643,00.html

Now I can't say I'm a fan personally of the big payments to executives but this seems to be yet another populist move by the government. Oh quick we have to be seen to do something!!!! Let's see what the ACA/TT polls are saying... LET'S GET THE COMPANY EXECUTIVES!!!!

ffs!

I really don't understand how this is going to help solve the economic crisis but thanks Mr Swan & Mr Rudd - I understand you are at least doing something!

I have to agree with this op-ed though

Quote:

Originally Posted by theaustralian

HONESTLY, how is this going to support the Australian economy in its time of need? How will giving shareholders the right to block excessive payouts to departing executives save the country from recession now, or at any time in the future?

Doesn't Wayne Swan have bigger issues to deal with than a few fat cats milking an otherwise workable system?

Executive salaries are an area where politicians are perfectly entitled to have a view. Bashing Pacific Brands' Sue Morphet undoubtedly appeals to Labor's working families. But it's not an area that needs their heavy-handed legislative intervention.

The onus should be on the corporate sector -- if it wants the support and goodwill of the community -- to weed out the carpet-baggers and prove it does not need such intervention.

There are, unfortunately, examples of egregious payouts to executives who failed abysmally, sometimes leaving behind the smoking ruins of once-great companies. They are high profile but they are the exception. Where is Swan's evidence that abuse of the system is widespread? (Presumably, that's what the inquiry will uncover.)

The Treasurer's proposed new law -- under which any termination payout worth more than one year's base salary would be subject to a binding shareholder vote -- would not, for example, capture Sol Trujillo's coming $3 million golden goodbye.

The fact is, the current system of giving shareholders a non-binding vote on executive salaries (which boards are free to ignore) generally works. Some companies still thumb their nose at the will of shareholders. In 2007, Telstra, for example, ignored the votes of two thirds of its investors when it pressed ahead with a generous executive remuneration scheme. The $10.7 million payout to OZ Minerals' Owen Hegarty was particularly galling.

But many companies have been shamed into winding back termination payouts to their executives -- so-called golden parachutes -- fearful of an embarrassing protest vote. And besides, it's easier to ignore the will of shareholders when your stock and profits are going up. Expect a significantly louder round of shareholder protests when remuneration comes up during this year's annual general meeting season. The system and boards haven't yet been truly tested in a bear market.

In publicly listed companies, shareholders get a binding vote on the selection of their directors. They entrust those directors to appoint executives to run the company for the good of shareholders. That includes setting appropriate salaries. If the board fails, shareholders can get rid of them. It's not perfect -- and it does make it difficult to punish failed executives who've long left companies -- but it works.

At least shareholders get to vote every year. Where's the annual vote for taxpayers who have been forced to fund significant “termination” payments -- guaranteed super at 75 per cent of salary -- to failed politicians?

An inquiry into executive remuneration probably isn't a bad thing. Any system that better ties pay to the long-term performance of companies -- rather than unsustainable short-term financial or stock price gain -- should be encouraged.

But will a binding vote on termination payouts actual lead to better corporate behaviour or lower salaries for executives? Sure, a bigger part of their pay might be made up of shares and options, which better reflect the performance of their company. An alternative, however, is for boards to simply shift a chunk of remuneration from the binding component of the package (termination payments) to the non-binding component (everything else).

That just means paying useless executives more for longer. And it's often difficult to tell exactly how bad an executive's been until long after they've left the building.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...014020,00.html

We can all rest assured that the Government is out there tackling the really big issues!

Melbourne's Docklands

2009-03-16T19:18:00.000-07:00

There's been a bit of press coverage lately about Melbourne's Docklands - firstly via Melbourne City's new Lord Mayor saying the planning of Docklands should be handed over to the City of Melbourne away from the developers (probably not a bad idea...). Then the age ran a rather comprehensive feature on Docklands...

I hate the age...

Apart from some rather daft and amusing comments my favourites being...

"And just as we should tolerate people of different ethnicities, of different religious beliefs and sporting beliefs, for God's sake, why can't we tolerate, embrace and celebrate people who want to live that sort of inner-city apartment, Friends, and Seinfeld-type lifestyle.

"It's Friends and Seinfeld versus Neighbours."

Nevermind that Docklands is NOTHING like Manhattan... but we can work with this for now. The other thing is that inner-city living has been around for ages.

And then this corker:

Kirner says a couple of fantastic restaurants and proximity to the CBD, as well as potentially great views from the wheel, are the Docklands key assets.

Nevermind the wheel doesn't work and has become a rather large white elephant. It was late to completion and then worked for 40 days before "cracking in the heat". And then the restaurant remark. I can't think of anywhere in Docklands I would actually want to eat. But that's dependent on finding somewhere that's open first.

Docklands unfortunately is a failure... it may change as more businesses move into the area but so far not so good. And some of the first buildings that went up (along the Westgate Highway) are really starting to show their age.

A development that was meant to be affordable has become a soulless and overpriced enclave for empty-nesters.

Chillout Photography Prize 2009

2009-03-11T21:25:00.000-07:00

Ok to start with I decided to not enter this competition this year.

Namely as Chillout is meant to be Daylesford based and having a photo exhibition in Creswick seemed a bit odd... and its a fair distance from Daylesford to be honest (I'd be curious to know what the attendance figures were like).

So anyways this year the theme was diversity...

I was considering entering 2 photos
and
But decided against it because I thought I was being a bit flippant in regards to theme. I should have entered. It seems that most of the entries - including the one that won seem to have very little to do with "diversity" - I'm not saying they are bad photos - I just question the relevance to the theme.

2009 Chillout Prize Winners Here

Ahh well!
Congratulations to the winners :)
Maybe I will enter again next year... I'll just find my best photo and submit that!

a thought on twitter vs journalism

2009-03-10T21:35:00.000-07:00

So I was having a quick scan through the age (my most hated of online newspapers - namely due to the video ads that keep crashing my firefox - not to mention the redunancy of video ads on an online newspaper...)

And there was this blog post

Which wasn't really anything exciting I guess - hell I knew about the earthquake through twitter as well and I also follow 774Melbourne for my real news. There's a certain comfort in the ABC for us Aussies I think...

But the bit that got me was this particular quote:

Twitter was useful on Friday night, but I'm not one of those people who says Twitter and other user-generated channels are a substitute for the mainstream media. Few people would go to see a Citizen Doctor, or get on a plane with a Citizen Pilot, yet some seem to think a Citizen Journalist is just as good as a trained journalist. Even if I didn't have the conflict of interest of being a trained journalist, I still wouldn't trust Twitter or Facebook as my primary sources of information.

Well of course he wouldn't - he's employed by fairfax media (duh!). It never ceases to amaze me how negative the traditional media can be towards new media, especially when the people making the comments try to come across as being objective.

I'm a massive fan of twitter namely as its largely an anarchy. There's no editorial control - which can be a good thing or a bad thing - and yes largely its verbal diarrhoea but its entertaining, probably more so than what an online newspaper article is.

And speaking of newspaper articles - had this forwarded to me today. For those of you who know me a little better know the relevance to this:

Does it matter where babies come from?

Australia has had its first baby via an Indian surrogate come home. A very touching and quite a sweet article.

Shanti!
(it's peace in hindi)

not much really

2009-03-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

Nothing really to say...
Had an ok weekend - I think we needed more downtime than what we got - just ended up so busy! Ah well c'est la vie.

One thing though and I think this may be related to my laptop - post-processing HDRs takes far too long. I still have about 10 shots from the motorshow to go... and I also have to process a couple of hundred photos from a commitment ceremony we went to on the weekend.

I learnt a very big lesson there. Right before the ceremony put in a new memory card - as chances are your memory will run out when you don't want it to (which happened >.< )

Look pretty car...

the motorshow

2009-03-05T16:29:00.000-08:00

Kind of weird really...
it's apparently an "international" motorshow. I was in & out in less than an hour. Really disappointed with the lack of exhibitors. There was maybe 20 or so? (please feel free to correct me).

The stuff that was there was pretty though :)
and I did find a good use for HDR... HDR is pretty much perfect for cars/motorshows! I think I got some interesting photos.

Still have a mountain of processing to do though - only got about 25 photos done last night. HDR merge takes longer than I would have thought. Was really blown away by the M1 Homage Concept. Such a beautiful car!

The flickr set is here

Have a good weekend :)
I'll be back on Tuesday!

so another blog

2009-03-04T19:52:00.000-08:00

I'm back with another blog...

I think this is probably about 5th or 6th blog - I still have blogs over on livejournal & bigpond that I don't use.

I think I'm basing on this on a piece of advice I got in a forum I frequent quite a bit.

But, write the book :-) A good purge.

And there I think is one of the reasons why I am writing this blog... it's a good purge or maybe just another form of verbal diahorrea. There is some stuff going on in my life that's bound to be quite exciting so I thought I would document it all.

Anyways I'm off to the Melbourne International Motorshow tonight so I will hopefully be back tomorrow with some photos of cars. Particularly keen to try to grab a HDR of the BMW M1 Homage.

cheers
michael