Happy Anniversary

Today marks my very first anniversary in Melbourne. Unbelievable. It's been one whole year and it seems like just yesterday when I flew here with Joshua and Joanne.

Nothing much has happened. I haven't even seen much of Melbourne and only attended my very first "formal" dinner 3 nights ago - Alex's company-cum-Christmas dinner. Well, that was quite something - to be surrounded, hugged and pecked on the cheek by people I barely knew. And the dinner dragged on for hours until after midnight. No joke. If you think Chinese dinners are bad, this Gwai Loh style dinner is even more long-winded. Still, it was good fun, and the food was glorious. Plus, we were entertained by Hot Stuff the clown-cum-magician.

Well, that was pretty much the highlight of my ENTIRE year here. But at least we are enjoying a better quality of life here. Water restrictions and costly charges from tradesmen notwithstanding, everything else is great. Cleaner air, less traffic, fantastic schools, excellent healthcare services, efficient public services, helpful civil servants, friendly people, safe environments, the list goes on. No complaints there, really.

And the kids love it here too. They've adapted to life here so well I don't think they can survive life in KL anymore. Even I would find going back to KL difficult. The atrocious public service in Malaysia is enough to serve as a deterrent for me! Not to mention some other unmentionables back in Malaysia. Sad but true.

Yep, I'll stick around here. With both kids at school next year, I'll have more time to myself. Maybe I'll be able to explore Melbourne on my own in my free time. That should be fun. Can't wait.

The Priest Who Swore

Swearing can be liberating. I do it all the time, sometimes unfortunately in front of the kids. Yeah I know, I ought to be more in control in the presence of the kids. Anyway, we are not talking about my swearing habits here. We are talking about the unusal outburst of a senior Catholic priest here.

Monsignor Geoff Baron, a senior priest in Melbourne, was recently filmed swearing obsenities to a group of young thugs. Worse, the short footage was posted on YouTube and circulated around the Internet. Naturally, such foul behaviour from a spiritual leader caused an uproar within the community. Parents were aghast and the press was unforgiving, demanding that the Church do something about it. The poor man apparently had to go into hiding for a while.

In the midst of all this, people seemed to have forgotten what triggered the abusive outburst in the first place. The abovementioned young punks had been taunting and tormenting the elderly priest as well as damaging church property for years. They had been warned repeatedly not to cause trouble but the warnings were ignored. They boasted about stealing things from parishioners and skated around the church compound in reckless ways.

So finally, on that fateful day, Monsignor Geoff Baron lost his cool and snapped, unfortunately in full view of many people and was caught on film. Well, he shouldn't have done that. But he is human after all and there is only so much shite a man can take. So in a moment of lapse, he did what many people do every hour of their lives. He swore. And he was damned because of that.

Come on. Where is the justice of this? The real baddies here were the young hooligans whom he'd tolerated for eons. If I were in his shoes, I would've throttled each and every one of them years ago! If anyone were to be punished, it has to be those useless punks whose lives obviously have no purpose on this planet. And shame on their parents too for doing such a lousy job bringing them up.

I say if a priest swears, so be it! He must have a good reason for doing so.