Korean boy's SINGING "TOUCH MY BODY", Mariah Carey's song

Berrima - The Brown Shutter

Made our yearly visit to Berrima today on a sunny, warm (not hot!) summers day. Was lovely, I keep on forgetting how gorgeous it is.

Of course everything is overpriced tourist prices, but you have to pay for the gorgeous sandstone historical aspect somehow.

We always find ourselves in The Brown Shutter, which basically sells body wash, scent and lotions of beautifully smelling things like frangipani (pictured), lavender, lemon myrtle, vanilla.. you get the point. Their point of difference is the gorgeous packaging.. as you can see, below.

I think this was the first time ever that we didn't leave with a gorgeous lotion!

How to remove Antivirus 2009 - DON'T use antiviruspremiumscan.com

One of our computers recently was infected with a trojan virus, which have pop ups to the effect that the computer is infected with a trojan virus and to go to antiviruspremiumscan.com to remove it.

Other pop-ups say the pc is infected with unwanted malware that could crash your system.

Don't do it. It's the new Antivirus 2009, the new version of the horrible Antivirus 2008, when you download from this site it takes over your computer and does horrible things! Screen grab is shown below.

Solution: we google the answer, it was pretty frightening cause you don't know which is the right site and which ones will infect the computer even more.

Luckily most of the results pointed to http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/malware-removal/uninstall-antivirus-2009 including pcworld site and cnet.com. It points to a program called Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, which was easy to use and seemed to do the trick. Good luck removing this terrible trojan!



Screen shot of Antivirus 2009 - it's evil!!!

Audun Carlse, Auden Carlsen and Boy George

Boy George jailed for 15 months

SMH Online, 17 January, 2009

British pop star Boy George was jailed for 15 months for imprisoning a Norwegian male escort after a nude photoshoot, in what the judge called a "premeditated, callous and humiliating" assault.

The 47-year-old former Culture Club frontman was found guilty last month of handcuffing 29-year-old Audun Carlsen and beating him with a metal chain when he tried to escape the musician's London apartment.

The singer and disc jockey, who stood trial under his real name George O'Dowd, admitted to police to handcuffing Carlsen to his bed on April 28, 2007, as he investigated the Norwegian's alleged tampering with his computer.

But he denied assaulting Carlsen, or hitting him with a metal chain, suggesting to officers that the bruises suffered by the escort could have been there due to the fact that he was HIV positive.

O'Dowd was also ordered to pay £5,000 ($10,979.36) costs.

"Whilst I accept that Mr Carlsen's physical injuries were not serious or permanent, in my view there can be no doubt that your premeditated callous and humiliating handcuffing and detention of Mr Carlsen shocked, degraded and traumatised him," judge David Radford said as he sentenced O'Dowd.

"He was deprived of his liberty and human dignity without warning or proper explanation to him of its purpose, length or purported justification."

O'Dowd and Carlsen met on the gay website Gaydar, and Carlsen first went to O'Dowd's apartment in January 2007, when they posed naked for the photoshoot and took cocaine.

Carlsen said the singer performed a sex act on him for "five seconds before I said no," and the pair later left on good terms, with O'Dowd paying Carlsen £300 ($658), of the £400 ($878) that they had agreed.

The Norwegian claimed during the trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London that O'Dowd proceeded to then send him a string of emails accusing him of hacking into his computer.

Despite that, Carlsen returned to O'Dowd's flat in April 2007 and said that when he arrived, he was handcuffed to a wall hook, called a "whore," punched repeatedly and beaten with a metal chain when he tried to flee.

Explaining why the attack happened, Carlsen told the court: "I think he couldn't handle the refusal - me not having sex with him."

Using the handcuffs to unscrew the wall hook, Carlsen then escaped the apartment onto the street wearing just his underwear, a T-shirt and running shoes.

Defence lawyers arguing on behalf of O'Dowd, who did not give evidence to the court, said that the dispute was regarding claims that Carlsen had stolen photographs from O'Dowd's computer.

They argued that Carlsen's suggestion that the attack occurred because of his refusal to have sex with the artist was "entire fantasy or a lie".

O'Dowd has had brushes with the law in the past - in August 2006, he carried out a week of court-ordered community service in New York City for filing a false police report over a non-existent burglary.

As well as the community service, he agreed to undergo drug rehabilitation.

His lawyer Steven Barker said on Friday that O'Dowd was "on the road to recovery, I sincerely hope this sentence does not knock him back."

Boy George briefly embarked on a solo singing career after leaving Culture Club in 1987, before beginning a successful career as a DJ and launching fashion line B-Rude.

AFP

Bananas

Those of you who follow this blog, know of my anxious wait for bananas to fruit. I had despaired that the plants in my backyard will do anything other than sprout enormous leaves, with years and years of no fruit.

How wrong I was.

As you can see by this pic, taken on new year's day, what looked like a leaf, became a flower and developed into the current gorgeous green bananas. I can't really count them properly, but I'm claiming 8-9 hands!

Everyone in my family now have advice, from cutting the other little banana plants around this main one so it doesn't have to compete for nourishment, to cutting the flower at the base for the same reason.

Oh, and there's been a few warnings about birds eating my bananas to a helpful tip of leaving them on and cutting the bananas (these are sugar bananas apparently) and eating them one by one.

Anyways, it's terribly exciting, even if I have to apparently wait for at least another 6 months.

8 Tips for a rewarding '09!

Ok, it’s the new year, and some of you will be in that ‘new year resolution’ mode. Don’t know about you, but I rarely keep any of those resolutions.

There are a many reasons why these off-the-cuff resolutions fails, from being unrealistic, not thought through to simple things like you forget about them.

I’ve got a few tips which I’ve accumulated over the years through others. So in the spirit of new year sharing, here are 8 tips for achieving your goals in ‘09:

1. “New Year Resolutions” out!
Use ‘goals’ instead which is applicable all year long and aren’t as spontaneous as new year resolutions.

2. Know yourself
Probably the most important tip. Know what you want, your strengths, weaknesses, your priorities and what you want to achieve in the short, medium and long term. It’s all about you and what you want to do with your life.

3. Set realistic goals
Nothing worse then setting yourself up for failure. Make sure your goals are realistic and achievable (without being a walk in the park). One of my goals last year was to lose 3kg. Depending on your weight this might be unrealistic or too easy. Keep the number of goals realistic too, no point in having 100 goals to achieve. You won’t be able to track them all.

4. Set milestones
Understand there will be goals which will take a long time to achieve and those which take longer. My personal preference is to have 3 month, 1 year and 3 year goals, with between 3 – 5 goals in each category.

5. Monitor your progress
a great way to tick off the goals you’ve achieved and see how far you’ve come. It also helps you to re-group to achieve the outstanding goals as well as modify and change according to your situation.

6. Run your race at your pace
They’re your goals, do it your way. If you’re a visual person, use a large sheet of paper and draw your goals if it helps. Or if technology turns you on, try a free online tool like joesgoals developed by Ian Smith, which tracks your progress each day. And because it’s online you can check your progress anywhere with internet. According to Kristy Dunphey, who retired at 27yo, you can use technology to help you achieve your goals or even can just as easily use a card file system . Kristy’s idea is great; put each goal on an index card, which gives you room to write updates and changes. You can keep completed goals in the same box to remind you of your successes - even pictures or other evidence to remind you.

7. Out of sight is out of mind
Make sure those goals are top of mind. I have my 3 month, 1 year and 3 year goals summarised in a little table and stuck up in front of my computer both at home and at work as well as on my filing cabinet. And when I achieve a goal, I physically strike that goal out.

8. See the positives
Don’t be too hard on yourself, of my 3 month goals last year, I achieved 2 out of 3. I can be disappointed that I did not achieve all 3, but I chose to celebrate the achievement of 2 out of 3 goals. The remaining goal, I’ve added to this year’s list.


Setting goals has really made a difference in my life. I’m a healthier, more balanced person.

And I’ve seen them shape success for others, most recently in my partner who has landed both a book deal with a major book publisher and a Phd scholarship.

I can see now how having goals sets your life’s direction and purpose and how remarkably easy it is to achieve something once you commit it to paper and keep it top of mind.

Good luck for ’09 and I hope these 8 simple tips might help in some small way to a more rewarding and satisfying new year!