Well last night was an interesting one, though all the interesting bits are the ones I don’t remember and I’ve had to rely on Pat and Luke to tell me. Firstly we went out for dinner at the Waterfront at Southbank, which was nice. I ended up having Salmon which was good, and my uncle ended up picking up the tab which was good as it meant more money to gamble for my parents. After that we went for a walk outside to try and get me to sober up enough to be able to get in the casino. I did end up getting in although the guy at the door told me to watch myself as I was probably a little too drunk. So I ended up on the pokies where I ended up coming out $7 ahead which was good and then I threw up in the foyer of Crown (too the disgust of the security guards). I cannot remember a thing after that but apparently we went back to the hotel room and I passed out on the bed. Everyone had a good time (except the cleaners) which is the main thing, though my parents lost like $300 at the casino and my brother ended up losing about $200. All in all it was a very enjoyable night and look forward to visiting Crown again.

Tonight we headed to a very nice Indian restaurant with family friends. We don’t see them a whole lot because they live in Nar Nar Goon so it was very nice to catch up with them. Anyway Indian cuisine is a personal favourite of mine and I recommend those of you who have never tried it to go out an try it. I also got the HDMI cable for my DVD player so I can now watch DVD’s in HD, because Samsung had forgotten to put one with my DVD player so I had to go back to the store and they ordered it in. That’s all for now, I’m about to sit down and watch Blood Diamond which I was meant to see at the movies but other things came up and now am going to watch it at home on DVD.

It seems at school, no matter how simple you try and make something, someone will come right along and make it far more complicated than necessary. Take for example the end of term assemblies. These are held at each precinct and Senior School (me) prepare a Power Point presentation to show the little kids about the events held at Senior School during each term. So your thinking well that’s easy, just create a Power Point for each term and send it to the three precincts. Well yes! I thought it would be that simple, but it seems I’m doing three Power Point’s each term to cater for each precincts individual needs. Then throw in the usual, “well a picture of the Rev drinking a can of Coca-Cola isn’t setting a good example for the children” and you have exactly what I put up with every day (I mean seriously how is him drinking a soft drink not appropriate).

It also seems that for moderately minor things you need about 25 people’s approval, and for major things nothing is checked - this is particularly evident when dealing with money where we have never had to get authorisation from anyone to do anything.

Also another thing, my brother is in Year 7 and has been given a 150 word project on supernova’s (seriously 150 words, my references are more than that). It got me thinking about the dumbing down of the curriculum which is clearly evident with my younger brother and sister. My sister cannot even do basic addition without a calculator, and don’t even ask about subtraction. While calculators are a common thing, basic addition and subtraction is vital for everyday life, from adding up what something is going to cost, to working out how long until the train comes (answer: usually a very long time, if ever).

Well my big news is I will be 18 in a couple of days. It’s one of those things that sounds exciting but really isn’t when you think about it. Anyway I will on Thursday be able to;

-legally able to buy and drink alcohol (I already drink so its not really a big thing).

-Buy tobacco related products (don’t smoke so again pointless)

-Vote in state and federal elections (probably the only thing that I can’t do now)

-Gamble (again something I already do now, however the one thing I will be able to do is go to Crown, which I’m doing in two weeks time)

I will also be able to go for my license, however due to me being lazy and VicRoads being stupidly far behind my test isn’t till late July. My other news is that it looks like my iRiver is about to die so I’m in the market for a new music player. I have been looking around at some but I’ve found that there seems to be all these 1 or 2gb devices around and not many +40gb. So it looks like I might end up having to go for an iPod or one of Creative’s hard disk players. Any suggestions would be welcome.

In other news, today I was dragged along to my brothers football game to watch him play his 50th match, it wasn’t all that exciting and they lost by 1 point which was pretty disappointing. But I did get to see the assistant coach from the other team hit a kid in the throat, anyway he got reported and will most likely get banned which kinda reminds me of a certain hockey coach at a certain private school in Melbourne. Well tomorrow I have a Sociology SAC, and another Sociology SAC on Thursday, however there’s no school on Friday which is good, and of course no school the following Monday due to the Queens Birthday (the sole reason I believe we should not become a republic, we would lose a public holiday). Well that’s it for now, at least that’s all I can remember, I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and will no doubt see most of my readers during the week (except the guy from Spain).

Finally after many months I’ve actually managed to have a quite weekend, with all the usual busyness of course. On Saturday I went down to school and took photos of sport. After that however I went home and simply watched some DVD’s I have been meaning to watch and overall just relaxed. Unfortunately my next few (about eight) weekends aren’t going to be so quiet as I try and cram as much in before the holidays. Also my brothers dog (Attilla) won some award at a dog show yesterday, best in breed or something like that. I wasn’t even aware he entered his dogs in shows but hey, everyone has there little quirky traits (not as bad as dog shows though).

I was talking to Luke Hawley on the phone just before about visitors to my blog. It has always intrigued me to know whether I know the people that come to my blog, either personally or through association. After looking through my reference sources, search terms and repeat visitor numbers I can conclude that most of the visitors that come to my blog either know me, or at least have some association with my school, friends or family. So I thought that I would post most top ten search terms that I receive visitors from;

1. Matthew Kennedy (including variations such as Matthew Kennedy Haileybury etc.)

2. James Panther (including variations, thanks Pant!!)

3. Haileybury (and variations)

4. Year 12 formal (have had a huge number of searches since the formal)

5. Luke Hawley (including variations, Luke admitted that many of these may be him googling his own name)

6. Cardinia Reservoir (one family trip has led to hundreds of extra visitors to my blog)

7. Connex (finally they are giving me something back)

8. Quotes (including searches for individual quotes)

9. Three (including variations such as “it’s good to be 3″, and Three Hutchinson)

10. Sahil Shekhar (and variations)

So there you have it, if you type in the above words in Google or any other search engine of your choice you will eventually come across this blog. I also receive a number of visitors from other blogs such as Luke’s, Stephen’s and even Pant’s (visitors from Pants blog have died down recently though). I also get a lot of visitors through my MySpace page and Facebook profile.

There are also many people that use Feed readers to view my blog, with the most popular being Google Reader and BlogPulse, although these two readers make up less than 50% of my feed readership with the rest coming from ‘Other’ readers.

On Friday I went and saw the school play, Inheritance. I must say It was brilliant, a big improvement over last year’s Romeo & Juliet (which just went on and on and on). On the technical side everything went off without a hitch (to the best of the audiences knowledge). Overall it was a brilliant night, however I did have to stand up during the second act as those damn black chairs are impossible to sit in for more than an hour.

On Saturday I had the usual job of taking photos of sport which was pretty boring. However we have now covered Boys and Girls Firsts Soccer as well as Boys Hockey and Martial Arts. After sport I headed home, and then went up to Chadstone. I ended up buying Frasier Season 5 on DVD (I already had 1-4) and picked up a couple of politics and foreign policy magazines from Borders.

On another note it is my brothers 26th birthday today, he’s enjoying his new job up at Sydney and says it’s much better than his boring, stressful one in Melbourne. He ended up getting a gift voucher from Mum to buy some furniture for his new house, and managed to win $7 on a scratchie I put in his card (He usually never wins a thing). Anyway I’m now sitting here watching National Lampoons European Vacation on Foxtel.

Today I headed out to a family BBQ at Cardinia Reservoir Park, which is only a few kilometres south of Emerald in the suburb of Narre Warren East to be exact. Overall it was a enjoyable day with brilliant weather. I managed to snare a few wickets at the game of cricket we held (not a hugely difficult task) and spent the rest of the day betting on the horses at the Emirates Doncaster Handicap (held at Randwick) and the Victoria Handicap at Caulfield. I didn’t manage to actually win anything above my initial investment. The rest of the week will be fairly quite, however I do have something on Wednesday (cannot for the life of me remember what it is) and I will be heading to the inheritance rehearsals on Friday (I have to show up at least once ).

Today we celebrated Good Friday by having lunch with our family, which included my Grandmother, Auntie, Uncle and cousins. Apart from the lunch (which was some chicken and salad) nothing interesting happened today. However over the last few days I have been playing Neverwinter Nights 2 which I borrowed from Alastair like 2 months ago, anyway I’ve decided I’ll finish it before the end of the holidays so I can give it back to him. So far I’m doing well and I must admit despite being disappointed by the original, the second one is definitely living up to expectations. My next week of holidays looks boring, however I do have something on Wednesday but can’t remember what it is, I’m sure if it was going to be something exciting I would have remembered. Also I’ve put some more Year 12 Formal photos in the gallery.

Unfortunately last night my Great-Grandmother passed away, aged 86. She was born in Cramlington, Northumberland, England, United Kingdom on 26/07/1920 and passed away peacefully in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on 22/03/2007. She trained and worked as a nurse, before emigrating to Australia in the 60’s. She married Robert William Woods (1918-1990) and had one daughter, Sylvia Woods (1939-). She was affectionately called ‘Nanna Whiskey’ after her beloved cat “Whiskey”. She is survived by her daughter Sylvia, grandchildren Andrea & Stuart and great-grandchildren Tim, Matthew, James, Tayler, Amelia & Elizabeth.

I found out she passed away last night, and the funeral is next Wednesday. Unfortunately she spent the last 15 years of her life in a nursing home as her health slowly deteriorated. While I cannot remember much of her when she was young and in good health, what I do remember will last a lifetime.