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You are here: Home / 2004 / Archives for July 2004

Archives for July 2004

Movie Show versus At the Movies

July 30, 2004 by Jen at Semantically driven

It’s been with interest that I’ve watched Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton in their new show ‘At the Movies‘ on the ABC and watched the new ‘Movie Show‘ on SBS with Megan Spencer, Fenella Kernebone and Jaimie Leonarder. I’ve got a lot of respect for Margaret and David and their show follows the same format they used to use on SBS. The new Movie Show people do a good job – they know their stuff but I think with three of them all having their say the actual movie review gets a bit lost. Margaret and David give a good overview of what the story behind the movie they are reviewing is so the audience get a good sense of what it is about whereas the Movie Show crew are a bit all over the place and I think important information gets lost along the way.

For instance this week they both reviewed Shaolin Soccer and the Movie Show gave it a good wrap and I thought ok it looks like it will be a good one. On At the Movies they mentioned that the original had been cut by up to half an hour and it had been dubbed in English which was not mentioned on the Movie Show at all. David didn’t rate it for this reason but Margaret thought it was quite good and she said the subtitles were hard to wade through.

Don’t get me wrong I think all of the abovementioned reviewers know their stuff, I just think that three presenters on the Movie Show is perhaps a bit too much. I guess though, they didn’t want to copy Margaret and David’s format too closely.

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In another place

July 30, 2004 by Jen at Semantically driven

I watched Storyline Australia on SBS last night and was sobbing so much my tissue was completely soaked and I couldn’t drag myself away to get another one. It was about an Australian couple who couldn’t have children of their own so they decided to adopt a baby – a Korean baby. I actually missed the first half hour because I watched Absolutely Fabulous but caught the last half hour of Storyline. The couple that adopted baby Jeong so obviously really wanted a baby of their own and also wanted to find out all about him and his culture – not just grab the baby and run back to Australia.

What made it so heart wrenching for me was that Jeong was available for adoption because single mums over there have no government support whatsoever and simply cannot keep babies they have by themselves. It made me think that if I lived in another place like Korea I possible would have been in the same boat and would not have Jaycee Junior with me now. It was sad enough hearing that but then it was even sadder watching the foster mother giving Jeong up to his new parents. She’d had him for nearly six months and with her two other children and husband had formed a very close bond and I was sobbing as much as her when the time came to give him to his new parents.

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Get off the road

July 28, 2004 by Jen at Semantically driven

Do you ever have a dream that you remember really vividly when you wake up? I had one last night, or first thing this morning after I’d fallen asleep after the dog woke me up with her persistent barking. The dream. There was a group of us walking in the middle of the road and I turned around and there was a vehicle coming up behind Jaycee Junior so I yelled out to to him ‘Get off the road’. He ignored me as he is wont to do so I yelled it out again. He still ignored me, then I just kept on yelling ‘Get off the fucking road’ as loudly as I could. For some reason I couldn’t or didn’t get to him to physically move him off the road but there wasn’t a sense of real danger even though there was some sort of vehicle behind him. I’m saying vehicle because I think it was more of a rickshaw than a car. Perhaps I was in Asia. Anyway the ‘Get off the fucking road’ has stayed with me all day as I woke up at that point to hear Jaycee Junior talking very loudly to himself in his room.

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Bye bye Big Brother

July 27, 2004 by Jen at Semantically driven

Big Brother finished last night and I had a bit of a tear in my eye when the winner Trevor proposed to his girlfriend Breea. If that ever happened to me I don’t know if I’d be pissed off that someone proposed to me in front of a live audience or just really happy. I guess if I was in love I’d be really happy. I think Gretel knew what was going to happen because when Breea came up onto the stage after Trevor won the million bucks, Gretel stopped his mum coming onto the stage at the same time by saying just wait over here for a bit or something like that. Even though I didn’t want Bree to win the money she did really well at the end. It would have been hard this year being up on stage waiting together like that and then being shunted off to go and have a look at your new car. I think I said at the beginning that I thought Bree would be in the last three and while I changed my opinion of her during the series, my first instinct was correct.

I would have liked Paul to win as he ‘kept it real’ and for me keeping it real is saying what you think about what other people do. Trev was probably himself in the house but he didn’t have any or many opinions about other housemates like Paul did and I like the way Paul tried to stir the pot. It did make it more interesting for me. When Paul was evicted on Sunday night I sat in front of the telly yelling ‘no, no’ just about until my voice was hoarse (well maybe not quite that much).

It’s interesting that the auditions for next year will be by the applicants being handpicked according to Behind Big Brother.

Now I can go back to not rushing my son ready for bed by 7pm each evening as I won’t be sitting down to watch yet the 500th re-run of The Simpsons.

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Another weekend gone

July 26, 2004 by Jen at Semantically driven

Like most people who work for a living I love the weekends and I’m especially lucky in that I get a three day weekend. Mind you I also don’t get the full-time salary a full-time worker gets but I think the tradeoff is far better. As I’m on my own with Jaycee Junior I definitely keep busy during the weekend trying to juggle household chores and maintenance with socialising. I can’t see the point of earning money if I’m just stuck at home on the weekend doing boring house stuff. I think the weekend just gone was a pretty good mix of both and I still have heaps left to do.

I managed to see the latest Harry Potter movie – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s a while since I read the book now so I can’t really remember what happened but I did enjoy the movie. When my friend and I were walking along the huge corridor to the relevant cinema there was a man with his two young children with him (the kids were about 5 and 3 years old). I said probably a bit too loudly to my friend, ‘I hope they’re not seeing Harry Potter’. Well they were. I was a bit shocked because it was an 8.30pm session for a start and my three year old would have been well and truly asleep. Aside from the late hour though I don’t think the movie is appropriate for a five year old and definitely not for a three year old. Cynical me thought this was a weekend dad occupying his kids time but I noticed the wedding ring afterwards. And to give the kids credit they were pretty good. I could hear them asking questions every now and again but not enough to piss me off. Actually the woman sitting a few seats away slurping on her slurpy ice drink was a lot more annoying and I was tempted to walk over and tip the drink over her head.

While I’m sort of on the subject of parenting, Jaycee Junior and myself went to a friends place for lunch on Saturday. Another couple and their four year old boy came along also. The place we had lunch at hasn’t got kids toys available (they’re 20 weeks pregnant) so I took along a bag of cars and a toy elephant my son selected to keep him amused. The other couple walked in carrying a great big sports bag of action figures then went out to the car to get more stuff – enough to fill a small toy store. And all this kid wanted to do was go outside and look at the horses and ride the tractor. I think my son got more amusement out of the goods than the other kid did. The kid obviously wanted to bring all this stuff with him and the parents said that he could. Actually that’s all they seemed to do was give in to him all afternoon which is not something I do with my son as it creates problems when you can’t give in to them. He was also a ball of energy and hyperactivity. I had to sit and take a deep breath after they left before I got in the car to drive home in the downpour. It made me realise how chilled Jaycee Junior actually is and how blessed I am.

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I’m hungry and a supermarket trolley warning

July 20, 2004 by Jen at Semantically driven

It’s all a very steep learning curve for me, this parenthood thing. One minute I think I’m doing ok, and the next minute I’m yelling at my son at the top of my voice and realise how awful I sound and how unproductive it is. It must be so much easier for two parents so that one knows the other can take over at some stage.

Anyway, Jaycee Junior has taken to saying, ‘I’m hungry,’ quite a lot, to the point that it made me think he wasn’t actually really hungry. He has four weetbix for breakfast just about every morning and when he doesn’t devour four weetbix, he will have some toast and porridge. He was getting in a habit of saying ‘I’m hungry’ about ten minutes after breakfast so I’d let him eat an apple. I’m surprised it took me so long to cotton on that the I’m hungry thing was just an attention grabber. He is a good eater so I just thought he was going through a growth spurt. We went away for the weekend and my friend said that his ‘I’m hungry’ was just an attention grabber and what a good way of doing it. It got to the stage over the weekend that he would say I’m hungry and I’d just say ‘Oh are you?’ then he’d go off and do something and forget about it. I think he now knows that I’m on to his ‘I’m hungry’ and I wonder what he will come up with next. So to remember for the next thing, which I hope is not ‘I need to do a poo’ as that cannot be ignored either, not to get sucked in to the attention grabbing thing.

Oh, and a warning about supermarket trolleys. We went grocery shopping last night and while we were at the checkout waiting for the Austrian students to go through and the checkout woman to give him a list of must see places, I had started to unpack the trolley and Jaycee Junior was running amok behind me, then I heard this almighty bang. I turned around and Jaycee Junior was on the floor with the trolley on top of him. Of course as a responsible parent I would not have let him do this to have fun but these things happen so quickly that it was unpreventable. I gave him a hug as he screamed the place down and he only had a small graze on his leg where the trolley landed on top of him. I used to be really paranoid about going shopping and my son yelling the place down but it’s amazing how quickly one can adapt.

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Weekend away

July 19, 2004 by Jen at Semantically driven

I went away the weekend just gone with a friend and her daughter to visit a friend who lives near Mildura. We left Thursday afternoon and came back last night and I feel surprisingly ok seeing it was pretty exhausting. When the three of us get together we talk and analyse everything and seeing we had nearly three full days together we didn’t run out of things to talk about. Altogether there were five children ranging in age from nearly two to 11 years old and they all got on pretty well. There was a bit of refereeing between the two youngest ones. At one stage we were sitting outside, kids inside, and I went inside to do something and as I was coming back outside Jaycee Junior said, ‘Where are you going?’. I said, ‘Outside’. He then said, ‘To do some more talking?’. He summed it up very aptly I think as that’s what we did.

We probably would have all stayed in our pyjamas all day if we didn’t have to do anything but we were usually dressed by midday. It was also a weekend of eating and drinking what we wanted and on Saturday night I was literally lying on the floor holding my stomach after having eaten a good portion of a box of Pringles without really needing them. They were there is all. So this week, it’s back to the attempt at the low carb diet for me. I’ve stopped buying my iced coffee which has an obscene amount of sugar in it and I’m also trying to cut down or stop other things like pasta, rice, potatoes and cakes. I was doing quite well till last weekend but I knew it would be bad so I’ll just get back on track now.

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