IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE....

CHAOS... We love Christmas and all that festive cheer, and we love the looks on the kids faces when they get their presents (and when Pete and I get mine!), heck, I'll even indulge in a carol or three. But seriously, as the countdown to the annual do begins, I wonder... What on earth have we gotten ourselves into?? Maybe, it's not so bad. Tree - check. Presents - check (sorta). Drinks - check (if we don't finish them while cooking). Ingredients for enough food to feed a small army - ch.. erm... eck (we'll see). Now all we have to do is cook, and figure out where to put the people. ARGH!!!! Of course, I'll (fingers crossed) check in the next day and everything would have gone fabulously and everyone would have gone home happy, and despite the horror hangovers, we'll be pleased. For now though. *Pressing the panic button*. Let the cookoff begins. Either way, Merry X'mas Y'all. Hope its a great one for you and your families :) Lots of love, TW.

TW PRESENTS... LE TREE

There ya go... I guess its really Christmas. I can't believe that despite how crowded the base looks, we're nowhere near done shopping! Trying to coerce myself out of the house to make something of the bank holiday, but cannot bring myself to leave the sanity of home. Its utter madness out there. Tis' the season for happy pills. God knows I am gonna need them... As you can tell, its considerably smaller than our tree two years ago, when my metric-self failed to realise that "a couple of feet" added up to more than I thought. This year Pete, thankfully, was on tree duty, which means our living room hasn't disappeared in a forest of green. Its all of 7-something feet tall, and the house smells of pine. Festive indeed. So, Christmas is 96 hours away and counting. Looks like we're keeping with our mish-mash of tradition this year. Turkey, roast lamb, mint and cranberry sauce AND curry, sayor lodeh, Myanmar styled chicken. Should be chaotic but good fun. Looking forward it... Well, to everything but the dishes after... Art XXX

HOME SWEET HOME...

Am finally back from Bali and ever grateful to be home. Don't get me wrong, covering the UN climate talks was a wonderful, eye-opening experience, even if it was exhausting, and I know years from now I will still be talking about having been there as climate change history was being written. Even so, I really missed home, Pete, family and friends, and because of the sheer intensity and long hours, two weeks felt like a really long time, especially this close to Christmas. Plus, now I can pay $1 for a Coke light and $2.50 for chicken rice. Yay! Have tried to get into Christmas spirit and put all the preparations on high gear, but after one false start, I realise I am still feeling somewhat lost and a kinda scattered, like I haven't really landed on both feet. Not entirely sure why but hope it passes real soon, especially since we are running out of time. Have gotten the tree done, though, so the house looks quite cheery. Will post a pic soon. Either way, figured I would check in and say hi. Will blog more later. Before I go though, here's a little snippet from Bali: This is little Malia Nuemann - the youngest greenie at the conference, complete with her own accreditation pass. The three month old is the daughter of one of the journos covering the event, and is still being breastfed, hence found herself in Bali. The UN let her in the first couple of days, and then one insisted she get her own pass... Spotted her in the media room and could not resist getting a shot. Cute huh? Anyways, gotta get back to work. Will check in again soon. Art.

ARE YA GONNA GO MY WAY?

An update from Bali, where we've put the fate of the world in the hands of a bunch of bureaucrats. In good faith, we're trusting them to somehow put aside their nitpicking concerns, and navigate a route to a future global climate change agreement to be signed in Copenhagen in 2009.... Its proving to be quite a task, especially if you take the word of one government leader, who said: "Before they can draw a map, they need to figure out which way is North". Overheard in the washroom after: "At this rate, their Bali roadmap isn't even gonna get to bloody Denpasar and back, let alone Denmark." Scary. But as the hours go by, increasingly true. While someone tries to get our collective governments a blinkin' compass in the 48 hours they have left, I ask myself: was this worth going without chicken rice for two weeks? Art XXX

GOIN' NUTS IN BALI

If you're wondering about that promise on which I failed to deliver about keeping the blog updated, its because things were insane in the lead up to my trip to Bali for the United Nations climate change conference, and has remain so since I got here. Great help, of course, is the fact that I have no internet access from my hotel room (as should be the case at all vacation destinations), which truly limits free time to blog in between trying to file stories. Anyways, as bureacrats argue about what they are going to do - not do - to save the planet, I - along with 10,000 plus other delegates and media at the conference have involuntarily found a innovative way to lowering our own carbon footprint at the event - starvation. The venue is completely void of any kind of affordable dining options (unless you make serious moolah... which I don't) which means choosing to go green (read: hungry) instead of going broke. The Bali International Convention Centre’s snack bars - supplied by the adjoining Westin Hotel sell basic sandwiches at close to $16 each, and canned drinks at about $4. Multiply that by two meals a day and 12 days, and thats close to $500 on food alone. *Groan*. Godsent has been the Indonesian Pavillion next door, which, has increased its traffic tremendously by offering coffee, tea, water and limited (read: I have manage to snag two cups in nine days) numbers of cup noodles to media for free. The crew at the hotel have also been sweet enough to look the other way while I stuff prepacked muesli into my backpack during breakfast.... But short of that, food is sort of a non-option. The things environment reporters end up doing for the planet.... More soon.. XXX Art