offprofile

Moving

2010-07-04T00:28:00.001+10:00

I've moved all the posts over to the new blog at http://offprofile.wordpress.com/ and will be closing this one soon when I've updated links.

WTF?

2009-11-01T15:16:00.003+10:00

What is the world coming to?

Three women, all in their thirties, carjacked a car in Perth.

Carjacking attempt foiled by manual

You'd think they would be old enough to know better. Nice example for their kids (if they have any).

Bombs in Jakarta - When is enough "enough"?

2009-07-20T17:42:00.000+10:00

The Ritz-Carlton and Marriott hotels in Jakarta have become the target of disgruntled extremists once again. According to this news.com.au article, 9 are dead and more than 50 have been injured. Approximately 2 hours later a car exploded near a shopping complex.

According to that article, 2 people were killed.

The death toll could climb higher, depending on the extent of injuries among those who survived. The initial death toll would have been even higher if the unexploded bomb that was found at the Marriott, had been detonated. Nobody has officially claimed responsibility yet, but authorities are pointing the finger at JI (Jemaah Islamiyah), or an offshoot of JI.

It really makes you wonder what the hell is going on in this crazy world. These bombings may well be targeted at foreigners, but the sad fact of the matter is that innocent Indonesians are collateral damage. Nobody in the world deserves to die or be injured in this way.

Murder in the name of politics, democracy, religion, wealth, poverty, greed, land etc. has been going since human beings inhabited this planet. When is it going to end? When is humanity going to be embraced by humans? I'm hoping that it will happen before it is too late and we've totally destroyed ourselves.

No country has the right to go in and start bombing another country under any pretext. No extremist or fundamentalist group has the right to go and terrorise and murder citizens or visitors in their own country. Self-defence is something totally different and everybody has the right to defend themselves against an aggressor if that becomes necessary.

Aggression in the name of 'whatever' is not acceptable. The good thing is that a lot of people out there are starting to see that and starting to stand up and say so.

Back in the old days, pre-internet, there really wasn't a great deal of contact between people of different countries and cultures. All the average person had to go by was what they were told on the news, and what their government allowed them to hear. Propaganda was the order of the day, and people were taught to fear the unknown. It is still going on today, but the difference is that there is a whole lot more information available out there.

Take a look at the social networking sites, the forums, blogs and email groups. These groups are filled with members from all over the world who would never have had the opportunity to meet if it wasn't for the global nature of the internet. These are people who may have been afraid of each other and their cultural and religious differences thirty or forty years ago. They are also people who have become friends, regardless of whether they will get to meet in real life or not. Yes, I am speaking from personal experience. I have also made some wonderful friends through common interests, and we have become very close despite the fact that we're all over the place.

So, what is the solution to the violence that is perpetrated by the minority. Is there a solution? I have no idea but it wouldn't hurt to get together to try and find one. The violence that destroys not only 'targets' but costs the lives of innocent parents, children, grandparents has to stop.

The tolerant and compassionate need to stand up and shout louder than the intolerant extremists who don't care about themselves or anyone else.

I care. My friends care. An awful lot of people out there care. Isn't it time to stand up and be counted? Maybe if we all could show more tolerance and compassion, even if it's only on a tiny personal scale, it would slowly start to spread and grow.

Maybe the future would look brighter then, not just for ourselves but for everyone else out there. People we have never met, people we probably never will meet.

People just like ourselves.

Britt Lapthorne

2008-10-11T10:33:00.006+10:00

I've been watching this story on the news sites as it has unfolded and I really feel for her poor family. This has truly been a tragic roller-coaster ride for them, and it's something that no family should ever have to go through.

Britt Lapthorne, a young student from Melbourne, had taken time off from her studies to go backpacking through Europe. It was a wonderful adventure for her, meeting other backpackers along the way and visiting many different cities.

According to people who met her along the way, she was "lovely", "easygoing" and "enjoyed a laugh". So why did it all go tragically wrong in Dubrovnik? And why was her family subjected to conflicting stories and innuendos about their daughters character? We'll probably never know.

Britt went missing from a nightclub in the early hours of September 18. Around ten days later, her father flew in from Australia, and her brother and his partner flew in from Germany. While Britt's mother faced an agonising wait back here in Australia, they did all they could to try to find out what might have happened.

Her belongings were found in the room of the hostel where she was staying. The hostel owner's son was detained and questioned, but released without being charged with anything. He was the one who called her 'a drunk' and 'promiscuous'. I can't even begin to imagine how statements like that would have come across to her family and her boyfriend. The fact that somebody who had very little to do with her, could make such a presumption is quite amazing. Fellow backpackers who have since come forward to pass on what information they could have particularly refuted the last statement, and while confirming that Britt had enjoyed a drink, she was not drinking excessive amounts.

Then there was the other rumour. Apparently an eye-witness had seen the hostel owner trying to post Britt's passport from a post office. According to the eye-witness, the hostel owner was turned away and told that it was not possible to post a passport through the mail. The hostel owner denied this report and said that it was the passport of another backpacker who had left it behind at the hostel.

The events of the night of Britt's disappearance have been sketchy, with various reports that she had been talking to a couple of tall men, that she had more appeared intoxicated than her intake of alcohol would warrant, and that she had not returned to the hostel that night so she must have disappeared from the club. Britt's apparent level of intoxication led to a report that her drink may have been spiked, but this was brought into question because the witness admitted to drinking a large amount of alcohol himself so he may have been mistaken. The fact that Britt had supposedly not returned to the hostel has been refuted by her brother's partner. According to this report - http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/news/local/news/general/you-can-help-find-britt/1330783.aspx

...she not only found the top Ms Lapthorne had been identified wearing in the nightclub Fuego - meaning she had returned to the hostel where she was staying - but a bus ticket and ATM receipt for that night which the police had not even noticed.

On September 30, an Australian Federal Police officer arrived in Croatia to assist with the investigation. Mr. Lapthorne, Britt's father, referred to him as a 'phantom' due to his lack of contact with the family. Doubts were raised about the AFP officer's suitability for this case because he was of Serbian descent and a staunch supporter of Serbia. According to the Australian Government, he was chosen because of his 25 years of experience as a police officer and the fact that he could speak Croat.

And then a fisherman found a body floating in the sea on October 6. The Lapthornes were extremely disappointed that they had to find out about this through the media rather than being informed by the police. At first they were told that the body couldn't possibly be Britt because the amount of decomposition indicated that this person had been in the water for a much longer period. They were also told that it was impossible to determine whether the body was male or female, and nothing further could be done until the DNA tests had been done. Reports that preliminary tests showed that the body was female with blonde hair, and of approximately the same height as Britt, were originally refuted by the police.

It has just been confirmed, that the body found in the sea is definitely Britt Lapthorne. The news has completely devastated her family, who had been clinging to the hope that somehow and somewhere she was still alive. The one positive thing to come from this, if it could be called positive, is the fact that at least they know now and won't be forever wondering what had happened to her. There are so many families out there, all over the world, who never find out what has become of their missing loved one.

I hope and pray that further investigation will uncover what really happened on the night that Britt disappeared. Was it just an unfortunate accident? Or was it something more sinister? If her death was brought about by foul play, I hope the guilty party is found soon. This is a family who has suffered enough.

I'm sure that almost any parents could put themselves in the Lapthorne family's shoes and understand what they have been going through, regardless of whether they have faced something like this personally or not.

It's a sad fact of life that this sort of thing could happen to anybody, at any time, in any country.

Sources: http://www.news.com.au/
http://news.google.com.au/nwshp?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hl=en&tab=wn
http://www.javno.com/en/
http://www.theage.com.au/
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/

Political Correctness

2008-05-03T18:37:00.005+10:00

How far will we go with political correctness before the English language implodes and becomes totally meaningless?
One of our local radio stations regularly plays This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race by Fall Out Boy. Not a bad song, and it seems to get quite a lot of air play. So what's different about the song now compared to when we first started hearing it on the radio?
God.
Yep, that's right. There is no God in the radio version of This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race.
Why? Well, I did hear that it was blocked/bleeped/erased, or whatever they do, so that it wouldn't upset non-Christian folk.
Come again?
I'm not a particularly religious-type person, but God is certainly not a word that I find offensive. I don't find Buddha or Allah offensive either, or the names of any other deities - good, bad or indifferent. So what's the big deal?
Political correctness has the potential to become a deity in itself. Sounds ridiculous doesn't it.
But aren't we all beginning to fear the wrath of the PC brigade? You know who they are. They're the guardians of the PC flame, the people who lay in wait ready to pounce if a non-believer says or writes the wrong thing. They're the ones who call for the old well-read and well-loved children's fairy-tales and novels to be rewritten so as not to be politically incorrect and offensive to the enlightened followers of PC.
How long will be it be before the words white and black are considered offensive and deleted from lyrics and literature?

How Time Flies

2008-05-03T18:17:00.003+10:00

I cannot believe that it's been over a year since I last ventured in here. Maybe I can believe it. I haven't exactly been a regular blogger.
Anyway, we ended up at Hervey Bay and I'm so glad because it is much nicer than Gympie and like heaven compared to Charters Towers. Good shopping and fresh fruit and vegies!

Another Overdue Post

2007-04-25T19:36:00.000+10:00

Life has been busy as usual, and we're now in the process of getting ready to move from Charters Towers and head back down towards Brisbane way. It looks like it might be Gympie, a more pleasant climate than the heat and dryness here, and it won't feel so isolated because it isn't too far from Brisbane and quite close to the Sunshine Coast. The house has just been put up for sale so it's only a matter of time. Yippee!!

I've decided to let A Little Bazaar go and move everything over to my other site offprofile.com
It's a shame to see A Little Bazaar go down the tubes but the domain name is up for renewal and I'll save a few dollars by doing this. I wanted to keep offprofile.com as La Femme Nikita only but it doesn't matter if the other stuff is there too.

Well, that's about it for now.

Catch ya later.

It's Been a While

2006-11-22T12:40:00.000+10:00

In fact, it's been so long that I forgot not only the login details but the registered email as well. Try and try again, that's my motto, and I eventually found the right email address.

This home-schooling thing is a bit of a strange thing, isn't it. I've had to start home-schooling the kids because of the problems we were having with school refusal since moving away from Brisbane at the end of '05. It could work out okay if (a) I was more organised, (b) the kids were more organised, (c) they actually wanted to do schoolwork at home.
They're doing it, but very slowly and mostly reluctantly.

It's very hot and dry here in Charters Towers, nothing more than a few drops of rain in the last few months. Unfortunately, Queensland isn't the only place that is suffering from a lack of rain. At the moment there are some very nasty bushfires raging in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales with the loss of one life so far in N.S.W. It would be so nice to see some decent rainfall all over the country in the near future, although I think C.T. is a dryish place to begin with and only gets rain if there's a cyclone out from the coast, or if there is a storm. I think we've had about 3 storms and a half-a-dozen rainy days, and we've been here just over a year. We didn't even get very much rain when Cyclone Larry was destroying half of North Queensland in March. It looks like there may be the first cyclone of this season developing out in the Coral Sea. I hope this one doesn't head for Innisfail. The people there still haven't recovered from Larry.

It's also giving me second thoughts about selling up here, and moving to the Innisfail/Tully area. That was the original plan, and there would be a lot more for the kids to see and do but we've all decided that it's way too hot up this way for us. The kids didn't want to leave Brisbane and have not settled in here in C.T. at all. They haven't even tried to make friends. They were really stressed about the big move to here, and absolutely hate the place. My mother and I enjoyed it for a while, and we've met a few people here and there. My friend Mal that I worked with years ago on Great Keppel Island, even sold his house in Cairns to move here with his girlfriend when I told him we'd moved here. It's been nice seeing him again after all these years, about 16 I think. lol
Anyway, the kids really cracked up about moving and didn't want to do it....now they're looking forward to moving again. lol At least there won't be tantrums and sulks this time.

We're looking at an even bigger move now, hopefully in the not too distant future. All the way down to northern New South Wales, possibly to a place that is about halfway between the Gold Coast and Sydney. A much nicer climate, and a heck of a lot more rain than C.T. and we're all looking forward to it...even the kids. The pets will be a lot happier too as they are all suffering from the heat. The dog spends the day lying on the bathroom tiles, Coco cat spends all day in the loo, and Jaffa cat just tries to find anywhere cool. Poor Buddy the budgie sits on his perch and pants so much that he looks like he's going drop dead at any moment. Our freshwater snail died last summer because the water in his tank got too hot. It was a real shame because we'd had him/her for a while and he'd grown from a little pea-sized snail to almost a plum-sized snail.

Onto other things, I've now been involved with distributed computing projects with the Knights Who Say Ni! team for just over 2 years now. They're a very silly bunch, but very dedicated to helping out with various medical and scientific projects that are looking for volunteers to help them out. More info about Distributed Computing can be found at my Distributed Computing page at my site A Little Bazaar. I've got a few links there that that may be helpful.
I've also started working on my La Femme Nikita fan site offprofile.com It's mainly a gallery of pics from the episodes, but I've been trying to get some different ones that haven't been put up on a lot of the other fan sites. I'm also working on a good set of links, especially music links. I remember how hard it was to locate a lot of the music from the series when I was searching for it, so I'm sure a good set of links along those lines will be helpful for some of the newer fans. It's wonderful to see a whole new group of fans emerging since the release of the dvds.

Time to get back to the real world now, so I'll sign off for the moment and try not to forget the login again.

It's too hot for a 'chocolate of the day', so let's just go for a nice cold chocolate thickshake instead. Yum! Or for those in the northern hemisphere at this time of the year, a nice hot cocoa.
Hooroo for now.