family –

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Glenda Larke — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:19:00 +0000

Me and Duke at Santa Monica

A birdwatching spot at Malibu — and if you look carefully in the photo below, you’ll see a strange shape in the water to the lower front right… Guess what?

Guessed what it is yet?

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Glenda Larke — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:58:00 +0000

Bigger than Granddad’s…

Glenda Larke — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 18:49:00 +0000

As some of you will know, my husband likes fishing and prides himself on his skills. But sometimes he loses out to the small fry…in this case, to his grandson.

Taken last month in Virginia.

Where I was yesterday evening

Glenda Larke — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:30:00 +0000

In the Banker’s Club, Kuala Lumpur.

This is the view from the window, an unusual look at Times Square (where you can still find a Borders Bookshop!) and the monorail down the middle of Imbi Road.

We were there at a reception given by the University of Western Australia (which is — with the Australian National University in Canberra — jointly considered to be Australia’s top varsity). Below is the Vice-Chancellor Professor Alan Robson giving his speech to the UWA Alumni Association.

And below is Prof. Robson presenting a Distinguished Alumnus Award To my husband.

And here below is a group photograph of all the recipients.

From the left: Dato’Sri Wong Soon Koh; Prof Emeritus Dr Hood Salleh; Dr Roland Dom Mattu; Prof.Robson; my husband; Ramli Ibrahim

The recipients were a real cross-section of UWA alumni representing ( from the left) politics, the social sciences, medicine, pure science and the arts.

Above is Ramli Ibrahim, dancer, choreographer and artistic director — whom I first saw dance when he was a student in Perth — and his sister, whom I met when she came to do engineering at UWA, and stayed in our house more years ago than I care to count — with the two of us.

It was lovely to see old friends from student days…

Happy Birthday to a Fabulous 40-year-old

Glenda Larke — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:02:00 +0000

And here she was, at 4.

That’s my girl!

Glenda Larke — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 04:49:00 +0000

The other day my daughter’s band (F.O.Machete) was the support band for TV on the Radio when they played Glasgow. Nuff said.

I am having way too much fun with the family…

Glenda Larke — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:48:00 +0000

Where I was yesterday

More news … much, much later.

Why I am distracted…

Glenda Larke — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 05:59:00 +0000

…from blogging.

I have visitors.

One of them is especially cute. My six-year-old grandson. He and his family and my sister are all here for my husband’s 70th birthday.

When they leave, I leave for Swancon/Natcon – so busy times ahead!

I shall be back, with photos, so be patient.

Now when I was young….

Glenda Larke — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 05:56:00 +0000

My husband and I were swapping stories in the car…harking back to our primary school days.

I lived on a farm and we had our own dairy cow, so if there was one thing I had plenty of when growing up, it was fresh unpasturised milk and cream and fresh home-made butter. Yet when I got to school, we were given one third of a bottle of milk to drink under some government scheme or another. I loved my milk cold and with the full cream skimmed off the top. At school it was pasturised, disgustingly warm (having been transported in crates on the open back of a truck), and topped with a glob of cream in the neck of the bottle. I loathed it, but refusing to drink it was not an option.

Post World War Two, after the defeat of the Japanese in Malaya, the returning British* were understandably concerned about the nutrition of the half-starved population, especially its children. So twice a week each child had to bring from home a cigarette tin, which would then be filled with powdered Klim Milk to take home.**

Anyway, boys will be boys, and those kids at the Bukit Beringin school in Malacca (hardly more than an open platform of cement with an terracotta tiled roof at the time) were no angels. On the way home from school, husband used to put a whole lot of powdered milk in his mouth to blow at his pals when they weren’t expecting it.

If he needed school supplies – a new pencil, for example – he’d take an egg from the henhouse on the way to school slip it into his pocket, and swop it for what he wanted at the shop along the way. Of course, if there was a bit if roughhousing on the way to school with his friends, you can imagine what happened to the egg. And he had to sit all day with that mess congealing in his shorts…

Ok, so husband has the best “when I was a kid” stories…

*I’ve never quite understood why they thought they had the right to return after failing to protect the country from invasion.

**I wonder what I would have thought of that at the time had I known…I don’t think I’d ever seen powdered milk, or knew it existed.

The Staggering Price of Going Home…

Glenda Larke — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:43:00 +0000

Those of you who follow this blog regularly will know that the Malaysian Government has made it impossible for me to live here in my old age because they have refused to grant me permanent residency, and refuse to enter into any further discussion on the matter…
…in spite of the fact that I am married to one of Malaysia’s more pre-eminent, highly decorated, internationally-renowned academics and citizens who has devoted much of his life to the future Malaysian scientists and scientific endeavour (I’m sure he will blush when he reads that, but to my eyes, it’s a true statement)
…and in spite of the fact that I have lived here for 32 of the past 40 years
…and in spite of the fact that most of those 8 years abroad (ultimately the reason I lost my permanent residency status in the first place) were while he was on government secondment.

So we have been looking at ways in which we can settle down where I was born, Western Australia.

And believe me, I am wondering how it is ever going to be possible.

Look at this, figures taken from the business section of The Star Wed. 7th July 2010.

Australia’s median home price 2009 was 6x the gross yearly income
Britain’s median home price 2009 was 5.1x the gross yearly income
USA’s median home price 2009 was 2.9x the gross yearly income

The median home in Australia cost $A 468,000 in May 2010
In US for 2009, the median home was US$216,700 or $A 248,085

In the past year, Australian house prices rose by an incredible 20%. Australian home prices are 82% higher than in the US.

I won’t even begin to say how much more they are than prices in Malaysia. Our major investment is in our home here – but if we sell it, it will only be about half the price of an Australian home one third of the size in a lousy area.

Maybe we’ll settle for a caravan somewhere…?