Ready to fight for another year, I was priveledged to have lunch wtih Mel, Kristen and Jay from the Antipoverty Centre yesterday when Mel came across from Adelaide for planning with the others. It was her first time in Sydney, so Kristen chose the Harbour View Hotel, under the harbour bridge in The Rocks to give her the ultimate Sydney backdrop for a pub feed and networking lunch.
Jay and I had the Fried Chicken Bacon & Cheese Burger Supreme ($27) – such crispy little fries that I couldn’t stop eating and a great piece of fried chicken. I was SO full but it was so good.
Kristen had the pumpkin ravioli ($34) and also wasn’t able to stop once full.
Mel got the Fish and Chips ($33) which she was able to control herself with, I’m told it was still delish though!
All a bit pricey, but it was good food with a great view and great company. Certainly a treat for some Antipoverty activists!
I have to say I’m pretty chuffed hearing back from people who had their Christmas dinners funded by my little thread on twitter. I feared it would flop or worse draw backlash. But it was so heartwarming 🙂 Thanks you to everyone who gave and received!!!!!
My Christmas was good and quiet, cooked a Xmas eve dinner for Bruce and I, went up to my cousins for Xmas lunch, and had leftovers with Bruce and his son for Xmas dinner. I’m glad it was quiet because I’ve been a bit deaf in my ears since about Thursday and I tried wax removal but it’s not better despite a heap of wax coming out. My Right wrist seems to have succumbed to RSI and gave me shooting pain I couldn’t sleep with a few nights, and my ankle I rolled while moving is still giving me grief. I do believe my body is screaming at me to stop. Usually it just gives me a sore throat, but I guess I pushed through too much and here we are, ringing ears to ring in the new year? I have a GP appointment booked on the 4th, so if I’m still suffering then I can tell all my woes to my non-bulk-billed GP for $69 upfront.
So we’ve moved in a starting to settle – the kids moved out a few days ago too. That was a stressful time and lead up but I’m glad we were able to provide them with clean safe housing for a few months while they established their baby. (yes, like a plant. I’m thinking of planting a rosemary bush here)
So, I rest this week, potter around, drive my little car with its new purple steering wheel to the shops when my ears give me more feedback on the world.
Well that was a few weeks of hell, wasn’t it? Moving house, cleaning the old place, 40 degree days, hot nights, family stress. We’re slowly unpacking, I’ve lost and broken a few things, but we’ll get there. Been using my phone tethering for internet. Still not getting the connection til the 5th December, which I guess is slowly coming.
We were asked in Antabuse last week what our goals were for 2024, what we wanted to achieve. I really want to get back to doing my Japanese practice and streaming it and games. My new monitor didn’t survive the move, and my webcam was on its way out a month ago. I’ve ordered a cheap webcam and I’ll use my phone for the twitch chat screen until I can bring myself to getting another second monitor, or if one falls my way which sometimes happens. It’s a real shame that the bulk waste just gone was the last one, with people needing to book one from next year rather than having certain suburbs having it at a time. It’s great shopping! We didn’t pick up anything this time since we were mid move, though we did dump a lot.
The kids are moving back to their mums place, I hope that works out for them, so I’ll get started on my new little phona routines when I have internet, when everything goes back after new year breaks. I also ordered a meal planning and shopping list pad for the fridge so I can plan meals each week when I get my vege box and local butcher and fish shop meats as much as possible. Though discounted Aldi and IGA items are on the menu too. Pottering around. Finding my way around.
Took most of the moving boxes to the recycling at the tip yesterday, my can and bottle recycling to the closest return and earn today. It’s in a carpark so not as cool for Maxi, but we went to another park for a run later. Next time we’ll do the park run first, then return to recycling.
The $1 Vegemite brownies I got from the church foodbanks were… odd. And they haven’t been finished off which usually happens to anything sweet in this house. I see why they were written off at the supermarket as not selling.
So, I was scrolling through Twitter and in amongst the horrors occurring in Palestine, I saw a few friends commenting on a post made by a chap named Kos Samaras , talking about how poor people are more concerned about the cost of living than deaths in Palestine. He made another one similar about the failed referendum. I’d link or share a screenshot, but I’m blocked. Kos is a Labor chap and lobbiest. So I guess he doesn’t like poor people speaking up for themselves. Kinda like how Van Badham blocked me not long after I replied to a post she (and Jane Caro and someone else echoed) asking about our experiences on welfare and I shared my story of being rejected for DSP. I mean t wasn’t in response to that post I was blocked, but it was the same week, she was just on a run of blocking people in the antipoverty space,
Anyways. In this thread, Greg Jericho (of Grog’s Gamut fame, ‘member when he was one of the first Aussie bloggers sacked over blogging?) posted a link to a recent Australia Institute report on Food Waste In Australia, with the overview talking about how food retailers actually profit from food waste, to the tune of $1.2 billion. How they do that is just another story of the rules allow you to make more money when you already have money – can’t sell something? Write it off as a loss and sell it cheap or donate it to Foodbank or Ozharvest and look like a hero while it doesn’t actually cost you anything. Meanwhile you can mark up your regular stock because things apparently are expensive, and you need to cover the cost of surveillance cameras, auto closing gates, racial profiling, and having guards follow Blak kids around the store (you’ve seen it happen), or just having your regular staff grabbing 4 year olds and accusing them of stealing.
It concerns me then that supermarkets and charities like Foodbank push for more financial incentives for Supermarkets to donate less desirable goods – whether they’re past their bet before days, a bit ugly or just not moving off the shelves – rather than advocating to raise income support or regulate how much profit Coles can make off a grocery shop so that we can buy the products we want when we want them and not have to rely on the “kindness” of others who make more money than us to get us these offcuts.
I still struggle with Woolies asking me (or anyone) for a 50 cent donation for foodbank at the checkout when the charities I buy my pantry goods from are charged for their orders of donated goods. Maybe I’m missing something? I’ve not gone into the nitty gritty of their annual reports of the not for profits, but I still know I’m paying for that can of chickpeas from the church pantry.
I noticed the other day that my local woolies accepts direct donated goods from customers for two local community centres via OzHarvest. And I checked, those then are free for the person off the street in need. So, please, do check where your donation is going, because it all feels like there’s a lot of money being passed around and written in spreadsheets only for the welfare class to be told to be happy they’re getting anything at all.
Senator Fatima Payne: The killing of innocent civilians in Israel should be condemned and we condemn it. The killing of innocent civilians in Palestine should also be condemned and we must condemn it. The international community loudly and proudly condemned Russia’s occupation of Ukraine when it started attacking Ukraine in 2014 yet today the world watches as the state of Israel deprives the entire population—men, women and children—of the basic necessities of life: food, water, electricity, gas and medicines. We must condemn it.
Israeli missiles strike residential dwellings, civilians, multistorey apartments, health facilities as well as places of worship, indiscriminately killing men, women and children. We must condemn it. Human Rights Watch confirms that Israel is using white phosphorous in Gaza. That violates the international humanitarian law prohibition. We must condemn it.
The price tag of Israel’s right to defend itself cannot be the destruction of Palestine. Israel’s right to defend its civilians cannot equate to the annihilation of Palestinian civilians. I hereby call for an immediate ceasefire to come into effect, alongside many world leaders and experts. Food, water, medicine and humanitarian aid need to be allowed to get through and reach the victims. Mediation and talks need to start, as obviously violence has not solved anything for the past 75 years, and a just and long-lasting solution needs to be sorted out.
I roll some more marbles, drop some more fantasy units in the games that I play quite passively with twitch streamers, in the other window I scroll through tweets, playing speeches by world leaders, interviews of ordinary people. People excuse the genocide of the Palestinian people, saying they literally did this to themselves, of course.
I just want to buy a Palestinian flag marble, there’s an Israeli one. Consume my way through this. Like buying a Kuffiya with purple in the weave to wear this summer to keep the sun off my pale skin, Or in solidarity at at Rally, a rally they try to scare us off from going to with threats of random searches or fines and imprisonment. Because order is more important in so-called Australia than justice, be it social or climate. Keep the peace, keep the status quo, however racist that may be.
Israel bombed a hospital. 500 to a thousand people dead. Patients, homeless, internal refugees, doctors, nurses, teachers, the disabled who had nowhere else to go.
But what if Hamas were hiding under there?
What if?
Whatif Hamas were hiding in your town. Holding a meeting at the Workers Club, storing weapons in the highschool hall. Sure, wipe out your city, your town, It’s for the overall good, what’s 500 more brown lives.
Oh but this is where I have to condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel, and the kidnappings of Israeli civilians. And I do. Hamas should not have done that. They should also not have been able to sneak in under the gaze of the most technologically advance military in the world. Australia buys its Centrelink surveillance tech from Israel, they don’t need our military aid.
Hamas aren’t the good guys. But neither is the state of Israel.
(I pause to hang out my washing inbetween rain showers)
I curse that the kids bring out all their plates and cups to wash at once, but am pleased to have running water to wash with, food to feed them, a safe place for them and the baby to sleep. “First world problems” we say as we deal with out day to day mental health or cost of living pressures, holding baby Emery tight while babies are bombed evacuating as directed by their oppressors.
We voted against the Voice to parliament. The least we could do, give Blak people an advisory voice to the colonial government. My electorate voted over 70% no. I’m not surprised. One booth, Wollombi, yoted majority yes. I voted yes in a referendum we shouldn’t have had a say in.
But what do you expect? They say the voting pattern was similar to that of the 1999 republic vote that I missed out on by a year, the same seats leaning yea and no, The spread very similar, the same people voting for the status quo. The same people being blamed for being uneducated and poor, The same people being fundamentally happy with being a British colony, and even if we do think we should move forward from that, it’s not the pressing thing that people who are living day to day care to debate.
Yes, we are a racist country. If was the racist no, not the sovereign no, or the disengaged no that won on the day. You see this here in the gloating in the facebook groups, the Blak kids being followed in the supermarkets, the white people claiming they’re just as discriminated against as Aboriginal people.
But the disinformation comes through. I was waiting at the foodbank for the afternoon free pies, there was a small group discussing the referendum and how the new world order had something to do with it. How Covid was a conspiracy to make someone money, how this one guys was beaten up in school by black kids so that means they can’t be racismed against.
“It’s okay to be white” was a motion in our parliament, just as “Israel has a right to defend itself” too precedence over condemning their war crimes. Nazi’s in Melbourne get an armed escort home on the train while they harass and intimidate anyone not white. They take the chance to yell anti-Semitic slurs and graffiti while also calling the Palestinian protestors terrorists.
I just go back to making my cupcakes and doing my little chores.
