Allow me to introduce the lovely Sylvie Louise Gain, born at 3.15 pm 22 February 2011. Our beautiful little daughter arrived after a relatively short, but rather intense, five hour labour that involved absolutely no pain relief on the part of Elizabeth! How good is she? Elizabeth was fully dilated by the time she got to the hospital and squeezed the little critter out about 40 mins after arrival. A textbook delivery according to our midwife at Royal Hospital for Women.

The little one is completely healthy, has been feeding and sleeping well and has been doing tremendous poos and wees.

Her vital statistics: 3.44 Kgs (7 pounds 9 ounces), 52 cm from head to toe, 35cm around her noggin. She was delivered by the midwife Natalie and myself – yep that’s right it was my hands that pulled her out once the head was through.

We promise not to be the kind of parents constantly uploading images of their child, but do allow us this initial indulgence. A short video and some images in the gallery below.

We’re both besotted and excited Sylvie has come to join our family.

Exactly 20 years ago today, a 5.5 richter scale earthquake hit my home town of Newcastle, Australia.

The earthquake, which hit at 10.27 am, killed 13 people and injured 166. The inner city suburb of Hamilton and particularly Beaumont Street, with its rows of shops, was the worst hit. Also devastated was the Newcastle Workers Club, which collapsed in horrifying fashion killing nine people. Thankfully at least in the case of the Newcastle Workers Club, the earthquake hit in the morning when the venue was relatively empty instead of later that night when it would have been full to the brim with people attending a rock show – I can’t find the name of the band, but I want to say INXS.

When the earthquake struck I was jumping on the new trampoline my sister an I had been given for Christmas. An apt place to ride out an earthquake you might say. At the time I was living at 12 Sygna Close, Rankin Park, in a new subdivision. There were new buildings being built all around our house and at first I thought it was one of the new houses nearby that had collapsed. It was only later that we realised it was an earthquake after the theories of an explosion at BHP, a mine collapse and a gas explosion had been discounted by the radio we were listening to with neighbours.

At the time, my mum was working in town at the Commonwealth Bank on Newcomen Street. I remember her recalling how she felt time slowed down and her spinning around to watch the tall glass windows of the bank shaking and moving as the earthquake passed.

Thankfully I didn’t know anybody truly affected by the earthquake. Nobody I knew died, was injured, or was even forced to leave their home so that it could be demolished. Instead thankfully for me the earthquake was simply one of those remarkable life events I experienced. I was one of the ones that could say, ’5.5 and I survived.’

Fellow Novocastrians what is your ’5.5 and I survived story’? Where were you when the earthquake struck? I would love to hear your stories.

We had our farewell party last night at The Metropolitan Hotel. It was a great night that continued on at ours afterwards. A lot of fun, perhaps a little too much fun…

For all the images go to my Flickr page.

Me and MJW immortalised in cartoon form”, posted with vodpod

My friend Charlie sent me the Current TV cartoon embedded above this afternoon.

Whilst I found this quite funny it is a little eerie due to the likeness of the two characters to myself and good friend Matthew White. Adding to the eeriness is the fact that these characters exactly replicate our positions on Twitter – I am an enormous fan and Matthew, well there aren’t many people that are more against the micro blogging service.

Coincidence or has someone been monitoring our conversations?

Check out the pics and decide for yourself.

Matthew White:

Me:

Last night I went for drinks with Maggie Hansdorfer the sister of an old friend of mine – Agnes Hansdorfer.

Anyways we were talking about Agnes, the things we love about her and the things that drive us crazy, when Maggie asked where I lived in NYC. I said I have never lived in NYC, so Maggie asked if I live in Seattle when Agnes lived there, I said no again. I said that the fact of the matter was that we met at E3 in 2005 when were both doing PR for Xbox, her in the US and me in Aus. We chatted a bit at the event and she helped me get some interviews with US execs and that was it. We swapped cards at the end and I returned to Aus and she to Seattle.

We emailed a few times when we got back and then we added each other on Messenger. And that’s where in Agnes’s words, we became ‘fast friends’. For a long while we spoke about her constant boy issues (she is in a good long term relationship though now) and countless other things from holiday destinations, to how she should have her hair and what the surf had been like that morning in Sydney. we don’t speak every day, though if you were to tally up all the days between when we started chatting and now, it would be more often than not that we had at least one Messenger conversation.

We have met up once since that first time, she stayed a night with me in London on the way to a family holiday in Greece, but other than that it has been wholly a friendship that has evolved been sustained on Messenger – oh and we have the occasional phone call.

So this post is dedicated to Messenger and the wonderful friend it has brought me in the way of Agnes – hope to see you in NYC in the new year Agnes.

Oh yeah I should say I work for Microsoft, and before you say anything this isn’t about them it is about friendship damn you…

Agnes and me when she was in London last year.

Twitter, the lovely little service that it is, introduced me to Mario Cacciottolo today. You see, we met up so that Mario could take my photo. No, not in a model sense, though with my looks it wouldn’t be out of the question – ahem…

Instead, Mario took my photo as part of a project he is undertaking where he takes a photo of a person, at least one a day, holding up a hand written phrase someone once told them.

You can read more about it here – on Mario’s page for the project.

Mario only planned to do the project for a short period of time, but now a couple of years in, is not really sure where it will end up. He has no desire to make money out of the project, though would like one day to host an exhibition in a gallery. I think it is a wonderful idea and would encourage anybody interested get in contact with Mario either on twitter via @marioSOTM or via his email – mario[at]someoneoncetoldme[dot]com.

Mario will post my picture on Friday and I even recorded an audio message that I assume will be posted next to it. What did someone once tell me? Well you will just have to wait won’t you.

UPDATE – It will actually be next week not this Friday that Mario will post the picture.