Exciting letter

Dear Mr Hobbs

On behalf of the Government and people of Australia, I am delighted to advise that your application for Australian citizenship has been approved ... The final step in becoming an Australian citizen is to make the pledge of commitment. You will not be an Australian citizen until you have made the pledge ....

Chinese quotes

In Parkes. Parkes is good. The observing is fine. Lots of kangaroos. Missing Sha. I've been discovering translations of Chinese sayings. Here are a few:

He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.

Do not remove a fly from your friend's head with a hatchet.

A dish of carrot hastily cooked may still has soil uncleaned off the vegetable.

So there we go.

Forms are stupid ... floods are annoying

Happy New Year everyone. It's the Year of the Tiger (actually, it will be tomorrow). "The Tiger is ... a sign of bravery. This courageous and fiery fighter is admired by the ancient Chinese as the sign that keeps away the three main tragedies of a household. These are fire, thieves and ghosts." Sha and I haven't had too much trouble with fire, thieves or ghosts, but we have had problems with floods. We had our third flood in a couple of months last night. This time it wasn't my fault. The rain was torrential, the road was completely submerged, my rubbish bin went floating off down the road and our house got flooded. The carpet smells of mold. It's still raining.

I should be helping Sha make Jiao zi at the moment. Apparently making Jiao zi and playing Mah jong is traditional on New Year eve.

Forms are so silly. I've just been thanked on an automatic form for "shopping with the British High Commission". Sha's VISA application for Spain asks for her "Numero del documento de identidad (optativo)" which is different to her "Numero de passaporte". We have space for three characters to write "If you reside in a country other than your country of origin, have you permission to return to that country?. No Si/Yes (number and validity)"? What do you tick if do reside in your country of origin? We also have about 3 characters to fill in our "telephone and telefax" numbers. There's also an interesting box labelled "Personal data of the EU or EEA citizen you depend on"

We went to the aquarium with Willem last week. We're going into Chinatown tomorrow!