One nation - or more?

Well, the current Australian Parliament has descended into quite a mess.

And it's all because of section 44 of The Constitution. Who would have thought? I don't even remember spending that much time studying that particular provision as an undergrad law student, although I do remember learning about the citizenship rule. Regardless, I bet law students (and their lecturers) across the country are having lots of interesting class discussions right now.

Malcolm Roberts from the One Nation party is an interesting case. I find it rather amusing that he is now having to 'defend' his allegiance to Australia, when the One Nation party has consistently made it their platform to spew the kind of divisive vitriol that has forced people like myself (i.e. migrant) to have to defend, time and time again, my own allegiance to Australia.

Just deserts.

Snail's pace

I felt well enough to spend some time outside the apartment today.

Nathan and I started with brunch at the South Melbourne Markets. We took the dog with us, which turned out to be a mistake. It was a very cold morning and dining al fresco was a bit too "fresco" for me. The dog enjoyed it though. She is a Scottish terrier cross after all.

After brunch, we dropped the dog back home and headed into the city to visit a designer furniture shop where I had my eyes on a designer quilt cover I had seen online. Unfortunately, the specific quilt I had in mind was not in stock and so the sales person had to check availability from one of their other stores.

Question: How long should it reasonably take for a sales person to do a check online? Well, in this case, it took almost an hour. It wasn't noticeable at first because there were lots of other amazing things in the shop to keep us mesmerised. But after 40 minutes or so, it started to become a bit of a drag. Ok, to be fair to the sales person, I also asked about a velvet cushion that was sitting in the showroom. So...1 hour to find out the availability of a quilt (I have no idea how much it will cost) and the price of a cushion.

Meanwhile, Missy Higgins (i.e. the singer) came into the store to ask about a chair she had ordered and had to wait because the sales person was 'busy' attending to us.

At some point, the sales person gave up and asked me for my contact details and said they'll be in touch.

After seeing this message on their Facebook page, I won't hold my breath. It seems that snail's pace is their trademark:

Very upset!!! Ordered 3 pendant lights 15 weeks ago, with a due date of 14 weeks. Heard nothing from them around due date, so I rang on the day before this date, spoke to someone who told me they would look into it, and she would ring me back, 2 days go by-nothing. So I ring again, and spoke to someone else, he said he would let me know as soon as he knew what was what. He did ring back within 10 minutes, told me they would be available from the Wednesday of the next week, so I said we will be in on the Thursday. Guess what, made the trek in, and NO pendants! They don't know where they are!!! So at this point in time, we have spent nearly $3000 On pendants we may never see! Bad form XXXXX!!! Our architecture recommended them, makes her look bad as well!

Resting at home

I was in hospital having my second catheter ablation on Monday.

Hopefully the procedure works this time, and will fix the terrible arrhythmias I've been having over the past couple of years.

Having already undergone the same procedure in March, I knew what to expect this time around.

I rocked up to the hospital, got lost (again) trying to find the right room, and changed into my hospital gown. I got fitted with the various electrodes, had a cannula put into my arm, and was wheeled into the catheter lab where I was put under general anaesthetic.

When I woke up again, it was all over. I was taken into my hospital room to recover and, as the anaesthetic worked its way out of the system, I began to feel better and better.

On Tuesday, I got to go home.

Nathan has made me promise to take it easy over the next week. The last time, I did too much too soon and that probably contributed to my gout flare up. I've learnt my lesson. I'm at home in my pjs with the dog watching TV. I'm trying not to attend to too much work stuff.

I won't know if the operation has been successful until a few weeks have passed.

I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed.

Canberra

Geeze. Time flies and I've been very tardy with my blog posts.

Nathan and I both had a great time in Canberra.

On the Saturday, we met my sister's future in laws for lunch. They had flown down from Brisbane and are not fans of the cold so it was unfortunate that Canberra had record low temperatures that weekend.

After lunch, Nathan and I managed to get to the National Gallery for the Indigenous Art Triennial.

Well, strictly speaking, it has been about 5 years since the last triennial so the exhibition is really a quinquennial (Good to see that I'm not the only tardy one).

Sunday was the day of the actual wedding. Unfortunately, I had an upset stomach, which meant I spent a lot of my time dashing off to the loo but it was still a great day.

My sister and brother-in-law decided against a big Asian wedding so only immediate family members were in attendance.

Lunch was a multi-course degustation that took up almost the entire afternoon. In fact, the lunch went so long that my brother-in-law's family got changed into more comfy travel clothes at the restaurant and went straight to the airport afterwards for their early evening flight.

We went home for a couple of hours and then headed back out to a family dinner.