Dear loyal readers,

thank you for your patience! I know I’m way over my proposed time I thought it’d take to publish the next entry, but once work had “officially” started, I became quite lazy with regard to these private jobs – don’t get me wrong, writing is still fun, but because I’m actually trying to make these things interesting for you and keep a certain level of quality, it somehow is work.

Anyways, let’s dive right in, shall we?

The last update was the new year’s thing, so the next event worth mentioning would be my birthday. Some of you might’ve seen this on facebook already, but as I use this blog to reach everyone as well as upload some more pictures, I’ll just repeat myself.
I think the best summary for my birthday is: “even in your twenties, it’s great fun to celebrate like a kid” – and we did!
When I got up in the morning, I was greeted by the little ones with hugs, presents, more hugs and detailed explanations and descriptions of my presents (yes, before I had unpacked anything). It was really great to see the kids so excited, just because someone received presents.
They were the ones unpacking them and even though the presents were for me, they smiled as though they’d just received them. I don’t want to sound all tacky, but it was heartwarming!
Next came the cake…yes, THE cake. The only thing better than its taste were its looks. I think this is a good time to paste the first pictures, because describing it just doesn’t do it justice.

as you can see, the beach cake shows me (yes…the black dude) buried in the sand with Scarlett and Seth sitting next to me. “I” am an actual action figure and because Lochie had only white guys, who were apparently unfitting, and this black dude (who has the right haircut, according to him) – I was chosen to be black, or vice versa, however you want to see it. No offense taken on my side, anyway. The level of detail is awesome as well. Got my cell with me, as you can’t go to the beach without music, am I right? Plus the standard 1.5L water bottle I carry around all the time.

As I was saying, it was yummy! It’s two layers of chocolate cake with a chocolate mousse in between, covered in a pretty yummie vanilla icing (the sea) and coconut rasps (the beach); plus, there were chocolate-nougat sea shells. I think it’s safe to call this thing Optimus Cake.

In these five pictures you can see what I meant with “celebrate like a kid”. We had party hats, those extending horns, fingerfood, popcorn and cake for lunch. It was great fun and we had a lot of laughs! The last picture shows Scarlett cleaning up her doll, right after Louise said “Oh, great. No she’s licking her between the legs…” No pun intended, of course
I think this sums my birthday up quite well, although I still owe all of you another thank you!
Thanks for remembering me and thanks for calling, skyping, texting, chatting, posts/messages on facebook and sending presents over. You really made my day and it’s so awesome to see that distance (and different timezones) don’t matter too much It was a great birthday and a way better way to “kick” off the year than in ’11.

I’ve often thought to write about my job here, but to be honest…I don’t want to I’m still struggling with the registration of the charity but am confident that after my (probably fifth) phone call with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) today, I’ll be finally done with it. Pay the fee, hand in the paperwork and my employer officially exists…
Or so we hope.

Besides my sister’s Jasmin (6th, happy birthday again, my dear) and one of my best mates Thomas’ (17th, again, happy birthday), it was also the birthday month for Louise (also on the 17th) and Gus. A friend of Louise was visiting and we had cake for the second time in seven days – life’s hard
Plus, I finally tried my fav persian dish without a proper rice cooker and it actually worked out. I have to admit that I’m quite proud of that.

The cake thing didn’t exclude anyone, as you can see.

don’t worry, no animals were hurt during the proceedings.

I think it’s safe to say that those were all the birthdays I’ve attended in January…so let’s move on to the next thing. A public announcement:

From this point on, I won’t send any more SMS to Germany or call from my cell. My Optus bill accrued an amount of a little over 150$ in international charges on top of the normal plan due to the fact that those are not covered by my 750$ business budget…that’s what I call an expensive deviation with regard to the understanding of billing procedures. Anyways, there are enough other ways to keep in touch, so I don’t think it’ll really matter.

The next thing that’s definitely blog-worthy is the letter I received on the 17th this month. Besides the fact that it was a great read, it came with additional lines from the German Post – but again, I reckon that pictures will tell a better tale.

Luckily I was still able to read it, but it made me wonder. Hands-up readers, anyone else feeling bad for doing this consistently  as a kid? I remember checking the mailboxes first in order to make sure they won’t catch on fire, but throwing in the crackers nonetheless…15 years later I’m on the receiving end and feel really bad for all the mail I might have destroyed with this stupid behavior.

Alright, the next thing on my list of notes here, is the Sunday fun day. I think I haven’t talked about it yet, at least not with some pictural backing up of the stories, so let me make up for that.
The idea of the weekend routines is to give the autistic kids structure and routines during the weekend, as that is apparently very helpful for them. So we always have pancakes & movies day on Saturday and the so called fun day Sunday. The latter means that after breakfast, one of the kids is allowed to draw a theme for the day out of a covered box and that theme determines the outcome of the day. For example “Do something in the nature – Bushwalk” or “A day at the beach” etc.
Yesterday it was “Do something nice for others” which translated to everyone doing something for every single person in the house. Before you ask yourselves what I did – I made a family fun day Sunday mixtape with four songs for each person in the house.
Thanks to the theme, I now have a lego spaceship on my desk, a beautiful drawing of Gus in my shelf, was able to teach Lochie a song on the guitar (and thereby getting him back to the instrument he’d neglected for over a year) and enjoyed a great dessert after dinner yesterday (Louise made a unique dessert for each of us).
Knowing you I assume you just glance over the text and look for the next set of pictures, so:
 

Now for some action filled storytelling! Even without the chance of going out for a drink or partying with friends on the weekend, I manage to keep myself busy and go to bed later than on working days. It so came to be, that I slept quite long on Sunday (11:30am) which resulted in me not being able to sleep early Sunday night. At around 2ish am in the morning, I finally fell asleep and already felt bad about the upcoming morning – you all know how it is. But, getting up at 7:30 wasn’t even something to worry about, as Louise knocked on my door at five to five (yes…not even 3 hours of sleep). In the process of brabbling apologies for disturbing me at this godforsaken time in the morning she told me that there’s a rat in her bedroom and she needed me to catch it. Another thing I can now cross of my bucket list. It took me half an hour and required emptying the whole wardrobe, as the quick son of a b*tch was really into hiding in shoes or crawling up dresses (perv, right?!). When I released him (or her?! I really like to think that a women kept me up at five instead of a guy not coming out of the closet…) outside, I realized it was already dawn. In order to make up for the early start I grabbed the keys, put on a jacket (reaaaally windy!) took my camera and headphones and drove to the beach to watch the sunrise. Lucky me, it wasn’t a clear day. But hey, I love sunrises and it was the first one I’ve managed to see here in Woodside, so let me show you a few of the pictures.

Before I close, here are some new shots of my substitute dog (wave@Lisa), because it wouldn’t be written by me if there weren’t any, am I right?

Ah, newest 8-legged roommate. I called him Fred, as in Fred Astaire, because he was always staring at me…it was only an evening of friendship until I released him, but it was somehow special.

Thanks go my generous friend Max I know have a good Scotch within arms reach and thanks to eBay I’m on an at-home-level when it comes to my beloved coffee. 

Aaaaalright, finally done! It always takes ages, but once I’m done I actually feel good about myself Hope you enjoyed reading it, I’ll try to come up with new stuff over the weeks. Although I’m pretty certain that once Claudia is here (which will be in 12 days) there’ll be new pictures and stories to tell!

Have a great start into the week,
R

don’t worry, no animals were hurt during the proceedings.