Appreciation of what you do and don't have

Let me tell you, I am so so so SO grateful right now to have some heating in my flat! I started writing this post a few days ago and the transformation between the temperature two days ago and now in the flat is incredible. The change in the last month alone is incredible as well. It's been such a mild 'warm' winter this year compared to last - daffodils were coming out in the streets a couple of weeks ago!!


The boiler had been broken for ah possibly a month or so (I only moved in 3 weeks ago) and with temperatures steadily declining, it meant that the temperature outside was pretty much what the situation was like inside. FREEZING!!!!! The temperature range recently has been a minimum of -6 with a maximum of 1. Nice and chilly!

My new street - freshly snowed

Before yesterday when the boiler finally was fixed (after many many delays) at pretty much any point of the day, when you would breathe out (which I tend to do frequently) a big billowing cloud of condensation/smoke/fog whatever it is actually described out appears, causing me alot of distraction! I was going to bed with like 6 blankets and a few pairs of socks and about 3 layers of shirts and a jumper and keeping my head under the blankets so it didnt get too cold!

But I am not complaining. Not at all. I was so happy to move into this flat, the environment even though physically temperature wise has been ridiculously cold, the warmth and friendliness of my housemates has completely made up for that. And now the heating is working and we are cheering!!

Just in time too! I went down to Shoreham-by-Sea today to see my Uncle Arthur and Barbara as I haven't visited for a while and in the 12 hours or so that I was away it started to snow, and snow, and snow. It only just began to snow down south at about 7pm so there was a dusting around the place. London however, has stacks of the stuff. I was quite excited. Its packing snow so I made a nice big snowball. I really want to make a snowman too, so I might do that later!!

But everything with the weather this week has made me so appreciative. Appreciative and grateful that I have a house to go to, somewhere to keep me dry, and definitely appreciate the heating when it works! It made me think about what it would be like living in a country, in a rural area where they don't have heating and for what it would have been in the past before the invention of electricity. Tough times.

I am blessed. Happy. Grateful.

Never a dull moment

I don't think I could ever be accused of being boring, or not attracting trouble at times!! Also I definitely have God on my side looking after me hey! So blessed.

I had a great day and night yesterday catching up with Sydney friends and friends who I met in Asia and Europe last year who are currently in Sydney. I went out to a club called the Chinese Laundry. I've known about it for years and been meaning to go for ages, and it worked out that I could go last night. Unfortunately so could many othe people and the queue was insane! Had to wait over an hour to get in to the club, which by the way was totally definitely worth it. There was some UK DJ rusky or something I think his name was who was playing so there was dubstep and DNB playing and crazy dancing galore! :)

I think I'd been there for a couple of hours when I checked my phone and saw a couple of missed calls and a text message from a random saying "Hi, I have found your bag, dont stress, please give me a call back, when you can, thanks..." Cue slight confusion! I had left my bag in my car (technically my brothers car) and had all my ID on me. So I texted back asking what bag and who it was and the guy called me back again (though I couldnt hear anything for the life of me because of the music). Turns out he was a security guard at an office block on Clarence St in Sydney and he'd found my bag and had my ID (old license), credit card, medicare cards etc in it. More confusion....!

So we left the club and went back to meet the security guard and get my bag. I was thinking over it as we were walking, because I had definitely locked the car (I'd double checked) and I figured that the only way my bag would be OUT of the car was if it had been broken into. Which in itself was an issue because a) it wasn't my car and b) the car's insurance has run out.... so if a window had been smashed or anything then I was in trouble.

I didn't really mind about the bag, my main concern was the fact that I'd left my computer in the car, along with my hard drive and USB drives (I have a few). That was my only concern because I had no money in the wallet (except for maybe 5-10 pounds, but I may have used them up in Czech Republic) and pretty much everything of importance/value is on my computer with no backups...

First I checked the car and obviously someone had used wire to unlock the car because the windows were all intact (thank goodness) and the doors were all unlocked. Luckily I had hidden the computer under the seat and that was left untouched. So, nothing was stolen except for my bag. Which is really weird.

Anyway, when we went to meet the security guard to get my bag I was trying to figure out how on earth he had managed to get my number to let me know my bag was missing. I had some documents from England in my bag, and apparently he said he called london to try and figure out who I was!! Not quite sure exactly who he called though. He was saying that he wasn't sure about putting any of the USBs in the computer in case they were corrupted, but ended up doing that and found my mobile number on my resume. Good thing all my documents are organised, but still it would have been a search to find it because it would be under various different folders.

So I'm happy to inform you all that there are still honest, genuinely helpful people out in the world and I've been very blessed this weekend because of that! :)

Blessings and batteries

I've been quite looked after lately, in many different ways. As I may have mentioned earlier, my car died and was sold to the wreckers about a month ago before I went to Mildura with the grand total of 20 years and 420,000km to its name.



Since I got back to the mountains I've been getting around mostly on foot with the odd occasional lift or borrowing my parents car if it's available at the time. Last week I spent the day with Erin and Charli, and Jared happened to buy a new car and they were kind enough to offer me Eleanor, Erin's car to borrow for the remaining 2 weeks that I'm in Sydney for. It has come in so handy and been a massive blessing.

I love older cars! Eleanor is an old corolla - complete with no power steering and a battery that can be a touch fiddly. I was driving the other night and saw something that made me laugh - Eleanor has an analog clock on the dashboard! cute.



Tonight I learnt the long way that its probably not the smartest idea to leave the lights on... not that I did that intentionally! Especially when you are in castle hill... I was watching a movie with friends at a fundraising event and went back to the car to discover that I had a flat battery and my friends' phones were all off... not good!! I sort of just waited there for about an hour, asking people who went past if they had jumper leads.

I discovered that a majority of people in Castle Hill don't have jumper leads, don't know what jumper leads are, or have jumper leads in their "other car". I would have push started the car myself (i have done that once on my own- scariest thing I ever did while at uni down a hill full of parked cars) except because eleanor has no power steering I probably would have either smashed into the car infront or the column in front of me... neither seemed like a smart move.

thankfully after about an hour of patient waiting some girls waiting to be picked up asked if I needed jumper leads as their mum had some. So took a quick drive to my car with them and bumped into another guy with jumper leads who also helped us out and we were all quickly on our way, no worries!