Mark Thomson

This is a neat little film and marvel of animation. The hours and hours of work that goes into making these little plasticine characters come to life is amazing. From the people that created the wonderful Wallace and Gromit series, comes this tale of rebellious chickens trying to escape from a chicken farm.

With multiple homages to WWI prisoner/escape movies, as well as little references to later known movies such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones, its very cleverly written. The characters are a delight and it's hard to pick a favorite, each with complete personalities and quirks, and hilarious dialogue. You'll find yourself quoting them! I highly recommend this film, as it's not just for the kids, and anybody should be able to appreciate the wonderful animation in this film.

Plot Synopsis:

Ginger's an unhappy chicken on Tweedy's Chicken Farm who dreams of a better place, and isn't afraid to try to escape. Along with a motley assortment of other chickens, they concoct schemes trying to get free. Unfortunately, they're largely unsuccessful until Rocky the Flying Rooster crashes onto the farm, and Ginger is given her latest plan. Ginger persuades Rocky to teach the other chickens how to fly so they can leave the farm, but Rocky isn't telling the whole truth.

When the horrible and bitter Mrs Tweedy decides to turn all the chickens into pies for more money, the race is on to fly the coop. Luckily after Rocky rescues Ginger from the pie machine, and sabotages the machine, they're bought more time. However, the flying lessons aren't working out so well, and Ginger is perplexed as to why they can't fly.

Finally Rocky's secret is revealed; he is a circus chicken who's fired out of a cannon and can't actually fly under his own power. He abandons the other chickens and leaves them to their fate. Dejected the other chickens give in, but Ginger concocts another plan, they will construct a plane! Fowler the RAF mascot chicken helps with the design, and the others furiously steal whatever they can get from around the farm and start building.

When the pie machine is finally repaired, and the farmer figures out what they're up too, they make their escape. After battling Mrs Tweedy in the air over the farm, they flee to a small island in the middle of a lake where they start a new colony and live happy and free range.

When the new Batman film was announced, I was excited but apprehensive after the two previous films were so disappointing. I can still watch Batman Forever, but I loathe Batman & Robin. I can't stand George Clooney in most things, and the Robin character I've never really liked. Batman is the ultimate hardass, he doesn't need to have a whining kid following him about. And don't even get me started on the campy-gayness of Schumacher's interference in the franchise - bat nipples anyone??

So I was really pleased when it premiered and the wonderful reviews for it started to come in. And although I didn't end up getting to the theatre to see it, mostly because the theatre prices here are just obnoxious now ($15 for an adult - I can get a new release video for $8), the day it came out on DVD I purchased it immediately. I loved every minute of this film. Sure it's a little slow starting, but it's an origin story so you expect a certain amount of exposition to these things.

Still this is one of the best origin stories I've ever seen on film. It's very well done, cutting back and forth between the past and present, but always with an eye on presenting Batman as a reality. There are no sculpted bat nipples, no cars covered in neon, just functional design that could exist. The Tumbler is quite possibly the most aggressive powerful car I've ever seen, and what guy wouldn't want one? Everything is developed and explained in a believable manner, that really helps to ground the film in a reality, a 'this guy could really be real' feeling.

I'm looking forward to a sequel, which should be something pretty cool now that the origin baggage is out of the way. The hint at the end towards the Joker appearing was pretty cool. I just hope they don't kill the Joker at the end of the movie like the other films did, since Batman never kills the Joker, just sends him back to Arkham Asylum.

The casting is really inspired as well, lots of big name quality actors who do excellent work, with the exception of Katie Holmes who is a bit meh. Gary Oldman in particular looks and acts like Gordon, and Christian Bale is also a very believable Batman. Caine, Neeson, and Freeman are fantastic as always.

Well recommended, certainly the pinnacle of modern superhero films at this time.

Plot Synopsis:

Young Bruce Wayne plays in the yard of his parents mansion with a friend when he falls into a hole in the ground filled with menacing bats.

Later Bruce is an adult imprisoned in a Chinese jail, when thugs attempt to kill him. He brutally beats them down and is placed in solitary. A man, Henry Ducard, approachs Wayne and offers him training, with what Bruce comes to discover is the League of Shadows.

Bruce recalls being rescued from the cave by his father Thomas, and later taken to the opera. During the performance he becomes scared of the bat-like performers on stage and asks to leave. As the Waynes step outside into an alley, a gunman robs and kills Bruce's parents.

After Wayne is released he travels to the mountains, to a monastery where he is trained in the ninja arts by Ducard. Henry helps Bruce to face his fears, and gives him the skills he will later use to avenge his parents.

Bruce recalls trying to kill the man that murdered his parents but failing. When he confronts Carmine Falcone, a local mobster about his involvement in the death of the Wayne's, Bruce is beaten. Bruce decides to head out into the world to experience crime, and gain an understanding of the criminal mind. He lives as a criminal for awhile, training and gaining experience, before he is captured and incarcerated.

When Ducard reveals he is working for Ras Al Ghul (The Demons Head), and tries to induct Bruce into the League of Shadows so that he may destroy the crime-ridden Gotham City, Bruce declines and a fight ensues. The monastery is destroyed, but not before Bruce has saved Henry's life.

Returning to Gotham City, Bruce finds Wayne Enterprise's has become less philanthropic and more money grubbing, producing military weapons instead of products that improve people's lives. Bruce insinuates himself back into society, and slowly builds his plans. Creating an identity that will strike fear and create an aura of myth around him, he begins building the Batman. Lucius Fox from Wayne Tech helps by providing Bruce with various pieces of equipment and technology that he uses to build his batsuit etc.

Batman begins to take on organised crime in the city, forging links with Detective Jim Gordon, and slowly brings justice to the organized crime element in the city. As he investigates he finds that there are connections to something much larger, and he crosses paths with Jonathan Crane aka. The Scarecrow.

Gradually it is revealed that Henry Ducard is really Ras Al Ghul, as he spreads Scarecrows fear toxin through Gotham's water supply network, and then attempts to spread it through the city with the help of a stolen microwave emitter device.

Batman battles Ras Al Ghul, ultimately stopping him with the help of Jim Gordon. The city is ultimately saved, but there's still a lot of work to do. Wayne's mansion was destroyed, but Alfred will help him make some 'improvements'. He recovers Wayne Tech from the shark that was running it, and places Lucius Fox in charge. And Jim Gordon asks Batman for help with a new villain, handing him a Joker playing card left at the scene of the crimes.

Busy like a crazy bee-like insane thing, buzzing furiously about. So much to get done at the moment, I've been so tired the last few days. I'm tearing through the jobs at home trying to get the house sorted for our move, cleaning out piles of paperwork, junk, and media. We just sold a bunch of our stuff on the net, kudos to the Mrs. for organising all that. She's off overseas on her jaunt in little over a week now, so lots to do before that happens.

My regular job is busy at the moment trying to get the StudentMax system sorted out, and other business is quietening down. I've decided to just finish the outstanding work but not look for any new work, especially since we lost a couple of hostings recently - not through any fault of ours i might add. Strange that someone who has been having problems with Telecom would choose to move all their business to them, just because its easier. Isn't that an oxymoron?? I'm a bit sad to have to wind the business up, considering how much work we've all put into it, but it's necessary as part of our great move, and who knows, maybe I'll set up again once we're settled in Oz.

We've almost found the dog a new home, which is a shame, we've really been missing her since she's been away on trial, but Rob's worried if we take Coco she might get killed by a dingo or roo. So we found a nice retired-man who loves dogs and is looking for a furry companion to fill his time in. I'm feeling pretty comfortable that they'll look after her.

I'm also drawing a short comic strip at the moment, hopefully for inclusion in the next issue of New Ground, if I can get my act together in time. Plot is finished, storyboards are started, characters are designed, started on panel 1, so cross fingers!!

I first saw this film on VHS after my brother rented it. It's a classic film, and certainly one of the best from Ahnuld's action stable. The film starts off as a war film with some suspenseful tones that create tension, the military team start as the predators hunting the missing personnel, and later the rebels. Slowly hinting that something else is out there hunting them, before the predators turn into the prey.

It's a good choice that the Predator creature isn't shown until nearly the end of the film, just the ghostly distortion of his cloaking field to hint that he's out there. Since your never quite sure where it is, or was that flicker it just then, you spend the early parts of the movie on edge looking out for it to appear. The creature is a brilliant design, large, powerful, and an interesting combination of a lizard and a crab. Quite iconic!

The story is quite good, something a bit different. Action packed with some good suspense, and well thought out. The fact that the predator hunts using heat-based vision is quite clever, especially when the hero deduces that he can turn invisible by masking his body heat. The theme of concealment is used multiple times on both sides; concealed bodies, hidden agendas and traps, etc.

The DVD I have is the twin-pack Predator I and II. It doesn't have much in the way of extras, just a trailer and commentaries. I would have liked the Collector's Edition because it has a lot of behind the scenes material, but as it was a gift I'm not complaining.

The picture is pretty good for a movie its age. There is some dust and grain evident, particularly during the titles at the beginning. Mostly they aren't hugely obvious because of the busy backgrounds; they tend to get lost in the complexity of the foliage. It would have been nice if the studio had given this print a proper cleanup, as it wouldn't have taken much to make pristine, and it's definitely a piece of movie history worth preserving.

The sound is excellent with good use of the surround channels, and good detail from the little clicks the predator makes, to the loud gunfire. I get a lot of complaints from the wife about the noise this one makes.

Well worth seeing, and definitely worth owning if your an Arnie fan. This is another favorite of my daughters, who is a massive Arnold fan. I keep waiting for her to bring home a huge hulking Bavarian boyfriend one day.

Plot Synopsis:

An alien vessel approaches Earth and drops off a small pod that hurtles down towards the surface. In South America a helicopter drops off an American military team at a small base in the jungle. Dutch (Schwarzenegger) meets with the commander and an old friend about an operation to retrieve some missing personnel from in the jungle.

The team are deployed in the jungle and eventually locate the crashed helicopter. The personnel are all missing, and after searching the eventually find them; skinned and hanging from a tree. They go looking for the rebels that did this, and attack their encampment. It then transpires that the rescue was just a cover to find this village, eliminate it, and pickup any intelligence they could find. Dutch is pretty angry that he was manipulated and his team put at risk. He resolves to head for the extraction point.

Members of the team are killed brutally, quickly, and efficiently while they travel through the jungle. They realise that something in the jungle is hunting them. After a few deaths and a couple of sightings of something shimmering in the jungle, they settle in for the night and construct elaborate traps should the unknown come for them. The predator has no problem circumventing the traps and attacks during the night. It continues to pick them off during the remainder of the trip until only Dutch remains.

Discovering that he can conceal himself from the creature by covering his entire body in thick mud, he creates traps and weapons, then attracts the creature to fight and hopefully destroy it. After some initial success wounding the creature, and disabling its shoulder-mounted cannon, Dutch finds himself battling the predator hand-to-claw, and eventually defeats it with a carefully concealed trap. As the predator lies dying, it activates a self-destruct device, which Dutch luckily manages to outrun. The extraction helicopter arrives to find Dutch standing in the middle of a large area of flattened and scorched jungle.

This is a really great film. I didn't get to see it until I was into my late teens, since we weren't allowed to see things that were scary, although my grandmother used to watch the sunday night horror movies with me, which is where I first saw Alien. Aliens dispenses with the monster/horror-house feel of the first film, and opts to turn it into a war film with horror elements.

This film redefined so many genres, and has inspired so many modern films and videogames today, particularly the popular Halo series. It also introduced new elements to the Alien canon; the military, expanded on Weyland-Yutani, and the alien queen. The DVD I have of this is the special extended edition which has an introduction from the director, James Cameron, and a lot of footage that was originally missing reinserted. This footage adds a lot to the story, expanding on Ripley's retrieval, the establishment of the colony, and the colonists being sent out to the alien ship by the Company. The picture and sound is probably the best I've ever seen it, certainly better than the original VHS version I'd seen, but obviously not as good as something newer that's been shot digitally.

The movie is still as scary-as-hell, with tension built gradually, only limited views of the aliens initially, good use of audio, lots of dripping, little noises etc. This film still sends my wife scuttling behind the couch. She can't understand how this can be one of my daughter's favorite films.

Plot synopsis:

Flight Lieutenant Ellen Ripley is retrieved from the shuttle Narcissis by a deep-space salvage crew purely by accident. After drifting for 50+ years in suspended animation, she was close to drifting out into deep space when they retrieve her. After being returned to a spacestation in orbit around Earth, she makes her recovery, only to find that anything she loved is dead and gone.

After an inquiry into the deaths of her crewmates and subsequent destruction of the Nostromo are glossed over, and her tales of the alien disregarded as fantasy, she's demoted to working the cargo dock at the spaceport. When communications from the colony that was established on the planet containing the crashed alien ship mysteriously cease, she is offered the opportunity to redeem herself if she will accompany a group of Colonial Marines as an advisor. She reluctantly agrees thinking that the Marines are going back to destroy the aliens, not capture for study.

They arrive on LV-426 to find the colony deserted, but her worst fears are confirmed when they discover some face huggers in stasis in the lab. Ripley and the marines find a small child living in the ventilation ducts, and Ripley takes her under her wing. Eventually tracking down the missing colonists to the atmospheric processor station, the marines head over in the APC to find them. On one of the lower levels they find the colonists cocooned into the wall, used as birthing hosts for aliens. An intense battle breaks out, and many marines are killed before Ripley can evacuate them in the APC.

Planning to leave on the dropship and nuke the planet from orbit, they summon the ship to pick them up. Unfortunately it is destroyed when an alien gets on board and kills the crew while in flight. Falling back to the colony command center, they fortify their position and attempt to wait out the night. Burke attempts to impregnate Ripley and Newt using the alien facehuggers in the lab, so that he can smuggle the gestating aliens back through quarantine to the Company for research. Ripley and the marines destroy the facehuggers before that is able to happen. The marines send Bishop out to the transmitter to summon down the second dropship from the Sulaco. Later the aliens travel across from the processing station using a maintenance tunnel, and manage to penetrate the command center. Once again the group is forced to flee. More marines are lost, also including Burke who gets his just reward, and Ripley and Hicks make it to the second dropship, unfortunately losing Newt in the process.

Ripley refuses to leave Newt behind, and instructs Bishop to take her to the processing station sho she can get her. She arms up, and heads down into the lower levels searching for Newt. She finds her just in time to avoid implantation, but on the way out, stumbles across the alien queen laying face hugger eggs. Destroying the queen's nursery, Ripley makes her escape, with an angry queen in tow. They just manage to escape in time on the dropship as the processor explodes and destroys a sizable chunk of the planet.

Back on the Sulaco, celebrations are shortlived as the alien queen reappears, having smuggled herself back concealed on the dropship. After a short battle between a powerloader-enhanced Ripley and the queen, she manages to open the airlock doors and suck the huge alien out into space. Ripley places Hicks and Bishop into the hypersleep chambers, before depositing herself and Newt for the long trip home to Earth.

Went mountain biking with Robin from work today and some of this friends. Weather was a bit drizzly in the morning, but it wasn't so bad because it helped to pack down the sand base in the forest, so the riding was pretty good. We took it easy because some of the others weren't experienced riders, although from their devil-may-care attitudes to doing the stunts on the course, you'd think they were pros. I was taking it really carefully today, because I've had so many accidents lately since I installed the shoe cletes.

Unfortunately on one of the jumps, Robin's brother Andrew pulled a Lance Murdock. He did a beautiful jump, but yanked the brake as he was landing and the bike flipped over onto its side slamming him against the ground. I swear my heart stopped when he lay on the ground not moving. I thought he was unconscious, but mostly it was just a lot of pain. We thought he might have been a bit concussed, but Rally Mark thought he'd probably just separated his shoulder so we weren't too worried. He looked a bit sick, so we sat with him for awhile and he eventually hobbled back to the car.

It put real dampner on the day - it was hard to enjoy the ride knowing that someone was seriously hurt. We puddled on for a bit and had a good ride in the time that remained. When we returned back Andrew looked terrible, very pale, and not doing at all well. It was a bit of a bummer that everyone called it a day, but realisation dawned later that it was the right thing to do. Robin took Andrew to the Accident Clinic and they did an x-ray, discovering that it wasn't a separated shoulder but a broken collarbone. Really explained why he wasn't looking too good, probably in shock. I'm glad he got some help, and I hope he gets better soon.

Yay my little man has finally returned. He's been away staying variously with my parents or my grandmother for the last week. I've missed him heaps. It's just not the same without him. I can't even imagined how I lived before I had my children. Sure they sometimes drive you mad, but you never stop loving them, and you only ever want them to be safe.

We had another round of juvenile behaviour again from a certain female relative (you know who you are!). I was really disappointed that she couldn't find it in her heart to also take my daughter on a planned trip to the Circus with my son. I thought it was really unfair, given that we even offered to pay her entry and deliver her to the venue. All they had to do was spend time with her. Apparently that was too difficult! I don't necessarily believe that it's because they have anything against Micky, but I think that another party has perhaps said something that's caused some friction. Really I think it's about the ongoing vendetta against my wife, which is causing us both a lot of aggravation. The thing the other party doesn't seem to realise is that by hurting her, your also hurting me. I can't say I'll be sorry to see the back of them when we move to Australia. It will be nice for the kids to have some real proper grandparents - Rob's family are so nice it fills me with shame to have inflicted my horrible parentage upon her.

Anyway it's great to have the family all home again. I found a big box of lego in the attic on the weekend and I gave it to Bay. He was so excited, it was a bit difficult getting him to go to bed last night because he wanted to play with it. He was up at 6am this morning building a model Halo city with little lego Master Chiefs.

I can still remember being allowed in my teens to see the first Robocop. It's a brilliant film, sure its graphically violent, but its black comedy themes of corporate enterprise generating profits at the expense of dehumanising and destroying peoples lives is still very much true today.

Murphy's journey to regain his humanity is often touching and heartfelt, and in striking contrast to the acts of violence the character perpetrates in his pursuit of justice. I guess there is 'justifiable' violence in the world. Peter Weller does a great job communicating his struggle to regain who he once was, the loss of his life and family, through layers of prosthetics and a bulky suit. Nancy Allen is also excellent as Murphy's tough partner Lewis. And who could have suspected that Kurtwood Smith who plays such a horrible bad guy in this could later go on to be hilarious in a comedy series.

I hear a remake is in the works somewhere down the track. I honestly don't know why Hollywood feels it has to remake a film that is perfect just the way it is. No doubt they'll foist some PG-13 piece of crap upon us. I'd rather they did started a fresh trilogy of stories with the character and made it an R-rated, than do another PG-13 kiddie friendly movie like Robocop 3 that completely misses the point of this character. Mind you we've seen a lot of this politically-correct crap lately - Aliens vs. Predator anyone?

The picture and sound quality in the DVD is pretty good considering the age of the movie. I hear an HD release of this film is too be offered soon, and it would be interesting to see how much better that print is. There are some extras about the making of the film, behind the scenes etc that are quite interesting, especially some of the director's comments about the film.

Plot Synopsis:

Detroit is a city in a bad state - crime is rampant, violent gangs roam the streets, and its not being helped by the large corporation at its heart, Omni Consumer Products. With plans to tear down a large section of the city and build a new corporate run Delta City, OCP is doing nothing to discourage the violence and lawlessness. When their plan to sell and deploy military robots, Enforcement Droids 209, go wrong, a backup plan is ordered - Robocop. OCP manipulates good cops into situations where they could be killed in order to provide material for their project. Alex Murphy is recently transfered to the worst Metro Police Dept in the city, and on his first day is brutally killed by Clarence Boddicker and his gang.

OCP take the barely living remains of Murphy and rebuild him into Robocop, erasing his memories, and deploying him as an unstoppable anti-crime machine, mostly as a PR exercise. Murphy is reunited with his partner Lewis who reawakens his memories, and leads him on a search to reclaim his humanity. In the process, he hunts down Boddicker and his gang to bring them to justice for his death, and uncovers corruption leading back all the way to OCP.

I'm going to break away for a moment from my usual DVD reviews and actually review a movie. We don't often go to the movies, mostly because of the excessive pricing, but we treated our daughter to the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie last night. It had some good bits, but I'll agree with most people that it wasn't as good as the first one. Personally I feel the pacing was a bit off. It had some really exciting, thrilling sequences, but there was lots of exposition, and it dragged a bit in places.

I suspect the problem is possibly that it's part one of a two-parter. I don't know whether it was originally written as two parts or one complete script that was cut in two, but its mostly all exposition and setup, and really only comes together towards the end of the film. My wife complained that while it had some good bits, it was mostly boring. I'd be interested to see part two (or part three in the series) when it comes out. I think most of the action and resolution will be in the last movie. Personally, I think it should have been written as one complete movie with some threads into the next.

Something else that strikes me as a bit odd, and I've seen it commented about in other forums, so it's not just me - Captain Jack seems odd. It's nothing that Johnny Depp is doing, as usual he's fantastic, but instead of Jack being a great pirate pretending to be a fool, he's the other way round this time. In the first film it was almost like it drunken idiotic behaviour was merely a distraction so that others would assume he wasn't a threat, but really he was. This time he just seems to lurch from disaster to disaster, bumbling along, and just narrowly escaping. I guess it just seemed strange for the character. Another friend commented that perhaps it was because Sparrow was deathly afraid of Davey Jones. Perhaps he's right?

I suppose it didn't help that we were only able to get into a late session and we were pretty tired by the time it finished - nearly midnight! I'd probably still buy it on DVD when it comes out, but I don't think i'll pay theatre rates to go again. Perhaps I would enjoy it more in the comfort of my own home when I'm fresh and alive.

What's good:

• Captain Jack - even as a fool he's still good fun


• The undead monkey


• Davey Jones and his crew


• The Kraken


• The cannibal island sequence


• The fight over the chest sequence


• The Voodoo Witch - dirty, but strangely sexy all at the same time

What's bad:

• Lots of exposition - can drag on a bit


• Some sequences don't serve much purpose - seem to be in it just for the sake of it


• The new governor - his scenes are mostly exposition - not that interesting. Hopefully it'll play into something more later.

So how should I rate it. I'd have given Curse of the Black Pearl a 10/10, so I'll have to give Dead Man's Chest an 8/10. It's not an abomination to entertainment, but could have been better - may improve upon subsequent viewings with it's missing half intact, the eventual Pirates of the Caribbean - End of the World.

Things are developing at high-speed as usual. Robyn's got the idea of immigrating into her head, and I've come home to find this, that and the other arranged. We've already got somewhere to live, something to drive, she's found a job, and I've put my feelers out into the job market to see what's available. I have managed to get her to agree to waiting for a few months though, and just investigating everything we need to know to make sure that moving to Brisbane is the right thing for us to be doing.

Already though it's looking pretty attractive. Houses are much more reasonably priced and we could probably get into something pretty spectacular on what we'd get for our place here. Jobs look to pay a lot more, so it's looking pretty good. Cars didn't look much cheaper though, so we're going to investigate whether we can take the SP20 with us or not. We've been told it's pretty hard to insure imported imported Japanese vehicles over there, but I guess its worth investigating since we just spent $15k on it and it would be a shame to flick it on so soon. Damnit, I was so happy with it too...

Bit of a downer though, I received an email from a client today who wants to cease hosting of his site with us. This is the second one in two weeks now, although both for different reasons. One is throwing in the towel because he isn't getting much business out of it. Unfortunately is company name uses too very common words with an 'and' in the middle, so when you put it in the search engine it comes up with everything under the moon that has those two words in it. Usually his site doesn't pop up to the top. We've tried everything we could, but he really needs to look at rebranding his business. So it's a shame but not entirely unexpected. The other client has been having problems with his telecommunications provider (Telecom again!!) and is sick of receiving multiple bills from different providers so he's looking to consolidate. I've offered to combine the lot, but haven't heard back yet so I don't know what's going on. Might be easier just to let him go now since we're looking at moving on. Still in two minds what to do about the business though: let it go, or try to carry it on from a distance?

We've been talking about whether to move overseas or not. There's increasingly becoming less and less to keep us here. Don't get me wrong, we live in a beautiful country and given the choice I'd rather be here, but the money is crap compared to how much its increasingly costing to live here. It's just becoming too hard now, petrol's just gone up again, local rates have gone up 10%, more compliance charges for things, ARC rates have gone up, food has gone up 30% in recent months - it just seems like theres no end to it. How are we left to manage this, I get a mediocre 2% pay increase from work. I've just recently dodged the redundancy bullet, and ironically I've been given more opportunities now to do development work instead of support work which I've been becoming increasingly tired of. But theres no more pay, no recognition, no modification of my contract, so I'm kind of confused now as to what's going on. Seems like I've been handed more work to do, and I'm supposed to be happy about it. I suppose on one hand the fact I still have a job is a good thing, but I work to live, not the other way round.

So we're starting to ask the hard questions, should we sell up and move across the ditch to Oz? We're going to look into it, best to see what the advantages and pitfalls must be rather than just being enamoured with the idea of the 'grass being greener over there'. It's hard to look at how well the inlaws are doing over there and not be a tiny bit envious, although after our experiences of the excessive heat over there at Xmas, I'm still a tiny bit dubious about the idea. But I always thought if I worked hard then I could have the things that I wanted and enjoy my life, and now it's just working to have enough money to put gas in the car to go back to work again, or to be able to have lunch today, stupid little things that we shouldn't have to obsess over in life.

I guess we'll see in time. We don't have to rush into anything at the moment. Rob is considering returning to parttime work after her trip to PNG, so we've got time to consider, and maybe her returning to work will help alleviate some of the pressures we've been feeling lately.