The Great Netherlands Horse Rescue

I first saw this video on Google but it isn't very good quality so I'd recommend viewing the YouTube one. It's an amazing story which brought tears to my eyes and a shiver down my spine. A must-see for horse lovers.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4584913278289860160

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n9wd7P5Apw

The time is nigh...

As the UK trip approaches, I'm beginning to feel that perhaps I've left a few too many things until the last minute but at least we've still had time for the fun stuff like snorkeling.

I don't have too much to say but I thought I'd check-in anyway and let you all know how incredibly disorganised I am feeling regarding our upcoming UK trip.

We leave in 8 days, on my birthday. Thankfully, it's an overnight flight which is good for two reasons:

1. You don't waste a day of your holiday on an aeroplane. This is only good, of course, if you actually manage to sleep whilst on the plane, otherwise you just arrive at your destination cranky, tired and jet-lagged.
2. It means I actually get to enjoy some of my birthday instead of just spending it on an aeroplane. Of course, this only applies if I have actually managed to get entirely and confidently packed by the day we leave otherwise I will spend my entire birthday running around in a flap, unpacking to make sure I've packed everything, then packing it again when I realise I have, then wondering if I'd packed a different particular something which I didn't check during the first unpack and so unpacking it all again.

I am of course hoping to be thoroughly spoiled by the air hostesses on our Emirates flight and to be offered lots of champagne and birthday cake.

As for being thoroughly disorganised, I haven't started packing yet, nor have I even managed to construct a list so I'm not entirely sure what I need to go out and buy. All guests have been banned from our house for the next week, unless they want to sleep on the lounge room floor, as the spare bedroom is about to be thrust into a chaotic world of suitcases and backpacks of varying sizes, piles of jeans and jumpers, snorkeling gear and camera equipment, so that Toby and I can go "AAAAaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh, we don't have enough room for everything! What do we do?" and then sort things into numerous piles of varying sizes of "must-haves", "would-likes" and "who-put-that-in-heres".

Aside from all that there's the house to put in order so that people can stay in it whilst we're away. And I figure it might be a good idea to have some accommodation booked in Dubai and some idea of what we'd like to do when we get there. We really wanted to dive in a region called Musandam but most of the tours are already booked up so we're now trying to decide whether to head over to Dibba in Oman anyway and see whether anything comes up. Oman is apparently a beautiful country but I haven't heard much about Dibba itself which suggests to me there isn't much to tell. Dibba isn't too far from Dubai and has snorkelling and diving locally which is why it might be a good choice. However, they don't expect to be too busy in December and I'm wondering why....

Anyway, enough of all that. You lot really don't need to stress about these things on my behalf (but if anyone does have any advice on visiting Dibba in December I'd love to hear it). How about a quick update on what has been going on in my world.

Well, two weekends ago we had a great snorkel off the boat ramp near Kings Beach in Caloundra. About six of us went and we were really lucky with the visibility which was probably around 10-15 metres. It was a windy day but we were in a really sheltered spot. There is a lot of fish life there. We saw the usual shoals of black and yellow stripeys, a few moon wrasse and similar as-yet-unidentified (by me anyway) fish, dusky butterflies, some shoals of larger fish, a ray, hard and soft coral, and lots more unidentified critters. We also saw two cute little eels, possibly morays, playing in a rock pool on the shore. Here are some movies and photos we took:

The ray:


The eels:


Dan's compilation:


Those of you reading this over email or RSS will probably need to visit my website to view these embedded movies. By the way, I think Dan is working on a better quality version of his movie so you might want to check back in a few days to see if this has been updated. You'll be able to tell because this text won't be here anymore.

School of stripeys - can anyone tell me who the imposter is to the bottom of the picture?




Sea star.



I didn't expect to see one of these whilst snorkelling.




Dusky butterflyfish - now that's more like it.



Underwater garden.

Last weekend we had Christmas with the Aussie side of the family which was really nice. Lots of seafood and salad. We also sort of celebrated four birthdays which are happening over the next month: Zoe is 3 on Wednesday, then it's my birthday on Saturday, on 28th December Toby's dad, Jeff celebrates his 60th and the day after that little Kielana turns one.

Now we're gearing up for a month of curries, christmas pudding, roast turkey, sherry, mulled wine, cheese and port, christmas cake, mince pies and more curry. Can't wait. But first, Dubai, and so far I've read about lots of nice restaurants and bars so I'm expecting to come back a few kilos heavier than I am now.

iRobot and iPod win CHOICE Shonky award

You may remember that some time ago I wrote about what I consider to be an excellent invention, a robotic vacuum cleaner, the Roomba iRobot. Well, I'm quite pleased I didn't rush out to purchase one because it has now won the CHOICE (Australian consumer watchdog) Shonky for Best Dirt Redistribution. According to CHOICE,

It’s about time they invented a robot that vacuums the house for us — it’s just that the iROBOT has a few minor shortcomings. Like, it’s almost useless on carpet. It’s OK on hard floors, though extremely slow, taking minutes to cover what you’d take seconds to do. And it’s noisy. Oh, and ours didn’t automatically return to its base for recharging, as it’s supposed to.

But what really made us doubt was its dirt redistribution function: when the small dirt container starts filling up, every time the iROBOT bumps into a wall or obstacle, a little heap of collected dirt falls out again. iROBOT? iDon’tthinkso.

See www.choice.com.au - robot vacuum cleaners for CHOICE's review of two robotic vacuum cleaners.

The Apple iPod also won a Shonky award: the iSHONK for dual shonkyness:

An iPod is a significant investment, so you don’t want your APPLE to be a lemon. And if there is something wrong with it, you’d expect an easy repair and warranty service. Podluck.

Level 1. Several readers complained about cracked screens, faulty batteries and problems with sound reproduction.

Level 2. APPLE doesn’t allow retailers to handle complaints under warranty (which is their obligation under Fair Trading laws) — you have to send your faulty iPod to APPLE yourself via Australia Post. And if they decide the fault isn’t covered by the warranty, you’ll have to foot the entire bill.

So, all you iPodettes out there, be very careful not to crack your screen. Speaking of faulty goods, I'm now off to find a replacement battery charger for my digital camera after over-heating the original by leaving it plugged in too long. I only hope I can find one before we leave for the UK in a few weeks.

We like tha moon

A bit of fun for Friday afternoon.

Thanks to my colleague Linda for introducing me to "We like tha moon" and The Spongmonkeys on her birthday a year ago when she came in wearing the t-shirt. I played this at a party once (not my own) because no one would believe me when I tried to describe it to them. It went down rather well, I think. Happy Birthday again, Linda. This one is just for you.

U2 Vertigo tour 2006, Brisbane

Bono gives it his all. From The Courier Mail

U2 were bloody brilliant.

Wow! I have found it very difficult to describe this gig without using an expletive closely followed by an adjective meaning "dead good". Bloody brilliant. F***ing awesome. Damn fantastic. The best gig I have EVER been to. I managed to run my phone batteries flat by taking photographs (most of which came out all black with a bright white light in the middle) and videos (which look a bit like the photos but sound as though someone is banging loudly on pots and pans whilst swinging the cat around the room) but as soon as it's charged and I've downloaded the pics I'll get one or two up here, so for those of you checking the site by email or RSS, check back.

The long and winding road to the stadium

I read a couple of reviews today and noted some folk were commenting on how badly organised the public transport was. To be honest, I didn't have a bad experience at all really. It took us a lot longer to get there than I'd expected. I've no idea where the stadium (ANZ Queensland Sports and Athletics Centre) was located but it seemed to take an age to get there from James and Melissa's place, where I was staying. Imagine my surprise when, after over an hour on trains and buses we drove past a sign for the Sunshine Coast. Given that James and Melissa live right next to the main road up to the Sunshine Coast this was a tad concerning. So, it is very likely that the duration of the journey was solely down to how shockingly bad Brisbane public transport is but, as most of the time I had no idea where I was and was just following James, I can't really comment. It was a wee bit stressful though as Jill got there at 6.15pm and had queued up and got our tickets and was standing outside listening to the support band, unable to go in because they wouldn't let her leave my ticket outside for me to pick up, whilst we were still waiting for a train in the city chatting up drunken Melbourne Cup tarts and trying on their hats. Other complaints I read included the fact that the gig was at such an out of the way stadium when there's a perfectly good one right in the city which is far more accessible by public transport. That seems like a fair comment to me.

Then when we finally got to the stadium at about 7.45pm (having missed the support act, Kanye West) we struggled to find Jill amongst the 45,000 plus other people meandering around. Eventually we did meet up and it was a pretty smooth ride from there really. James and Melissa went off to do their thing in the general admission mosh-pit area, which I think was a bit more stressful due to the vast numbers of people trying to get in through one gate. I heard they even ran out of beer.

VVV is for Vertigo

Jill and I, on the other hand, queued for about five minutes and made it in to the stadium in time to visit the loo, buy water, queue for booze tickets and then queue for booze. And then began the mission to find exactly where row VVV was. Yes, as imagined it was three alphabets (minus the X, Ys and Zs) up some steps . In fact we ended up pretty much as far away as we could get. Right at the back at the top of the stadium, slightly to the left but not much. Despite the fact that U2 very closely resembled ants from our viewpoint I think we had the best seats in the house. We could see the entire stadium and I got a good idea of what a 45,000-strong crowd looks like, we had a beautiful breeze (it being an open air stadium) and were way up in the stars. Generally I noticed that, other than the mexican waves undulating around the stadium prior to the band's entrance, the majority of people in the stands sat. It is ironic that the seated area is referred to as the stand and I really can't comprehend how anyone could go to such an electifying show and not get up and dance. We were fortunate that those around us were very enthusiastic and danced, sang, jumped up and down, stamped their feet, yelled and rammed on the corrugated iron at the back of the stand for the entire performance. There was an incredible atmosphere.

Lights, big screens, elevation and an electrifying performance

U2 didn't neglect us either. Not only did they delay the show by thirty minutes to ensure we'd got in and settled, they were also kind enough to have erected a 30 metre or so screen made up of goodness-knows-how-many lights right behind the stage, and two large screens either side of that which showed live images of each of the band members. The light show was incredible. From pretty patterns, to clips from their videos, to shots of the gig, we saw it all thanks to that big screen. They even dedicated two of their first songs to us. They didn't specifically state they were dedicated to us but... Vertigo... Elevation... it's fairly obvious, isn't it? There was also a circular walk-way which came right out into the crowd but we were so far away we could only tell there was someone on it when the spotlight shone down.

The performance was energetic and full of classic U2 anthems. I was expecting to mainly hear tracks from their latest album, "How to dismantle an atomic bomb" and maybe a couple from one or two albums before that but I was pleasantly surprised to receive something of a greatest hits performance with as many golden oldies as new tunes. I've included a track list below for those interested.

Yes it's f***ing political

Bono did go a bit political on us but I didn't mind. It's to be expected really and he's not aggressive or angry about it, he's passionate and informative and I happened to agree with a lot of what he was saying. He spoke mainly about ending poverty in Africa but he also mentioned Amnesty International and human rights abuses. He specifically mentioned David Hicks, the Australian man the same age as me who has been held in Guantanamo Bay for about five years now without trial. He called for David Hicks to be brought back to Australia. No more, no less but I was interested to note a division in the crowd. The people in front of us specifically weren't particularly impressed and Jill heard one of them comment that Bono "has no idea about Australians and Australian culture" or words to that effect. I was then interested to read this comment on The Courier Mail newspaper's website:

well Bono you overindulgent prat , Who the heck do you think you are? fact is most Aussies despise David Hicks He would have if he hadn't already shot at Aussie troops so the general consensus is stay out of our politics, sing your pretty little songs and go interfere in some other countries politics. Davis Hicks can rot over there and you can join him if you like,

I'm not sure that this person is the best example of Australian intelligence, I do hope not as his grammar and puntuation are appalling, but it certainly gave me an insight into the Australian psyche with regards to this matter. A little while ago I read Enemy Combatant by Moazzam Begg, a British Muslim who was arrested and detained by American forces for three years without charge or trial before being released by the British government. He mentions Hicks in his book and talks about how he was a very quiet chap and didn't seem to fit in. Being white and western he struggled to converse with the other detainees, most of whom spoke some Arabic. He had also ceased practising his faith and was harshly criticised by some of the other prisoners for this. I have often wondered why the Australian government hasn't sought to bring Hicks back to Australia. Now I'm wondering if perhaps it is because the Australian people don't want him back. Personally I believe it is inhuman and immoral to detain anyone without trial, let alone subject them to some of the horrors reported by Begg.

A milky-way of mobile phones supporting a worthy cause

But back to the gig. One of the highlights was when Bono asked the crowd to create a milky way with their mobile phones. It was amazing, beautiful in fact to see all these tiny screens sparkling in the vast stadium. He then asked everyone to SMS their name to a number to show their support of the Make Poverty History campaign. And this morning everyone who did so received a text message from "Bono" thanking them for their support and directing them the Make Poverty History online campaign.

The last song of the encore was Kite, which made me think of Toby, and they finished by releasing a kite into the sky which was a beautiful and touching end to an extraordinary evening.

The home stretch

Except then there was the journey home and there have been a few complaints about this too. Buses back to the city, or Banoon station - the one that appears to be in the middle of nowhere by virtue of the lengthy train journey from the city to get there but is actually close to the road going to the Sunshine Coast - were provided but it was mayhem trying to get on one. There seemed to be no order, and you know how we Brits like our queueing. We attempted to get a bus to the city but it was just crazy. An impossible crowd pushing and heaving and who knows how long we would have waited. So we got a bus back to Banoon and really didn't wait that long, although it was a teensy bit hairy for a short time when the crowd discovered a middle doorway on the bus right close to where we were standing and practically pushed us onto it. We managed to get straight onto a train which took us all the way home and were were in bed by 2am.

Then I was up at 6.30am to begin the long journey back to the Coast. I'm now incredibly tired and I'm off to bed. Good night.

Track List

Would you believe I remembered all of the songs, only there was one I didn't know and I got another mixed up with something else. So, for the sake of giving them in the right order I borrowed this list from a website but I'll be jigged if I can remember which one:

1- City of Blinding Lights
2- Vertigo
3- Elevation
4- Until The End Of The World
5- New Years Day
6- Beautiful Day
7- Yahweh
8- Walk On
9- Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
10- Love And Peace Or Else
11- Sunday Bloody Sunday
12- Bullet The Blue Sky
13- Miss Sarajevo
14- Pride
15- Where The Streets Have No Name
16- One
Encore:
17- Zoostation
18- The Fly
18- With Or Without You
19- The Saints Are Coming
20- Angel Of Harlem
21- Kite


(By the way, this afternoon's so called dangerous storm was a bit of a disappointed. After a couple of lightening strikes and moments after my last post, it changed its course and headed north, leaving us with darkness, immense amounts of rain, a bit of giddiness which soon passed and not much else, although plenty of nearby areas suffered hail and lightening strikes.)

Severe thunderstorm on the Sunshine Coast

I will tell you about U2. I've been talking about nothing else all day. But first I wanted to share with you the amazing storm(s) I am surrounded by right now. Check out this Severe Thunderstorm Warning map from the Bureau of Meterology (BOM). I have placed a green dot at my approximate location (at uni) on the map. This is from about 30 minutes ago so we're pretty much in the thick of it by now. Note, I did not add the info boxes stating "This thunderstorm is very dangerous"; that's courtesy of the BOM.


It has gone from being as black as night outside to being very dark with an ominous green tinge. Usually that's an indication of hail. There is a lot of impressive thunder and lightening going on and the lights keep flickering. Sippy Downs, where the uni is, is notorious for losing power during electrical storms. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen whilst I'm writing this.

I'm starting to feel a bit queasy from all the charge in the atmosphere and my boss has just told me that his wife called to say a tree on their property has been struck by lightening and has fallen across their driveway. I'm more than a little concerned for all our pot plants at home but hopefully it'll lose a bit of severity when it hits the coast. Goodness knows when I'm going to actually get home judging by the number of storms on the map. I'll leave you with a BOM radar image of precipitation from about 30 minutes ago. Black is really bad - very heavy rain. As you can see, we're pretty much right under the black spot.

The weird and the wonderful

The weird

Yesterday lunchtime I saw a car in a tree! It was the most bizarre thing and I didn't note too many details as I was driving around a small roundabout with emergency vehicles parked at the side at the time. Before you ask, I have no idea what kind of car it was but it was red. It was definitely in the tree as opposed to wrapped around it, or pushed up it. Yes, IN the tree, up the tree! A few feet up the tree! The road just before the tree sloped and there was a roundabout so the only thing I can imagine that happened is that the car came too fast down the road and couldn't manage the roundabout and somehow flipped up into the tree. I can't remember if the car was pointing upwards or downwards. There were a lot of emergency folk mulling around rubbing their chins. There was no one in the car. But there must have been someone in it when it first got into the tree so I'm intrigued to know how they managed to get the person out without the car falling out of the tree. So far I have not managed to find any reference to it on our local paper's website. All in all it was very surreal.


The wonderful

I'm going to see U2 tonight. I can hardly believe it. My friend Jill, God bless her, asked me at the weekend if I'd like to purchase her spare ticket for the gig in Brisbane. I told myself that if it was less than $100 then I'd go - an early birthday present to myself. It was! I am so excited. I'm leaving work in about 5 minutes to get the train down to Brisbane and staying overnight with friends before heading straight back to work in the morning. I have copied all my U2 albums onto my new MP3 player and I'll spend the 2 hour journey listening to them. What with that and the Melbourne Cup (I didn't win!) it's such an exciting day that I don't quite know what to do with myself and can hardly concentrate on any work. I'd better be off then... I'll report back later and let you know how rad the gig was.

Biometrics prevent pub fights

This is kind of old news now as I read it a week ago but forgot to pass it on. Apparently, a pilot biometrics scheme, in Yeovil of all places, is being used to cut down on pub brawls by scanning drinkers' thumbprints and preventing entry to anyone who has already been barred from any of the other pubs in the scheme. According to silicon.com, there are seven pubs taking part in the scheme and South Somerset District Council reports a 23% decrease in alcohol related crimes since the start of the pilot.

The latest news from silicon.com on this topic is that 40% of respondents to an online poll they conducted said they would be prepared to participate in such a scheme. On the other side of the fence are the 29% who said they would consider moving if their town introduced such a scheme, and sitting on the fence were the 31% who really couldn't be bothered just for the sake of having a pint - lightweights!

Me suspects the poll gave a basic three choices:
a) Yes I would participate in such a scheme;
b) Probably isn't worth it just for a pint;
c) No way, I'd rather move;
which probably wouldn't give an altogether accurate impression of people's opinions. But I merely speculate.

For more on biometrics see silicon's A-Z of biometrics and biometrics on wikipedia.

The only things certain in this world...

... are death and taxes. Or are they? They certainly happen, that's for sure. I've been learning the ins and outs of the "interesting" Australian tax system and felt like having a good old long-overdue whinge about the Inland Revenue.

"In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes," so said oh-wise-one Benjamin Franklin. Well, the former I can't much speak of being, as I am, still very much alive and most of the people I know are also still alive, thankfully. Who knows what the future of technology will do to the inevitability of death. Certainly, the chances of dying have diminished significantly since the onset of modern medicine, which is why there are so many old people around these days. Don't get me wrong, I love old people. I wish there were more of them. It's just they cost money and who has to pay? Yes, that's right. You, the tax-payer which is all well and good so long as there are more tax-payers than old people.

Certainly taxes have seemed very certain in my world of late. Take 2003, for example. Having never submitted a tax return in my life I was suddenly required to submit two; one for the Inland Revenue, who somehow managed to track me down by hassling my parents, and the other for the Australian Tax Office, which was bizarre as I had earned approximately $5 that year! It appears that everyone has to submit a tax return in Australia and an interesting process it is. The tax return for the Inland Revenue was less interesting and more what you might call Painful (notice the capital P).

Painful, and some might argue unnecessary, Inland Revenue tax return process.

Firstly, I had very little warning of having to submit the return. I wasn't expecting it and when they first contacted me I thought, "oh well, I'll just fill in a form telling them I'm not currently residing in the UK, that'll throw them off". But no! Only now they had my address in Australia! So they kept sending me forms and reminder letters and by this time there was no way I was going to get it done and sent off in time, as they like you to do these things by the end of December which everyone knows is a crazy time of year.

I decided that I'd do it all online because then I'd have until the end of January. When I logged on, however, I soon discovered that nothing is that simple as I had to apply for a password, which they then had to take 7-10 days to get around to sending out, ironically by post, and then add on time for postage to Australia. Eventually I got it and logged on. It asked for my National Insurance number which I was organised enough to have at the ready. Then it asked for some other piece of information which I did not have. No worries, I thought, I'll just fill in what I can, email all the stuff I need to my Dad who can check my papers and get back to me. But no! They wouldn't let me move on until I'd given them that specific piece of information. A few days later, after Dad had rummmaged through the loft to find my papers and emailed me back I completed that page only to find that I couldn't answer the question on the next page without further info from my files at home. And I couldn't move past this page either. And so it went on and finally after a few weeks I got the thing submitted.

That didn't satisfy the good old In Rev though who continued to pester me for tax returns for the next two years, despite me having earned nothing in the UK, until eventually I wrote to them and said "Please stop asking me to fill in tax returns. I don't have any reason to. I earn no money and I don't live there any more. Please, leave me in peace" and thankfully they agreed.

Interesting Australian tax system with smarty-pants eTax software.

The Australian tax system is a bit different. Basically, from what I can see, everyone rorts it. They don't bother to tell you that you're supposed to fill a return in, you just have to know these things. It has to be submitted four months after the start of the new tax year, pretty quickly compared with the Inland Rev's eight months, nine if you're submitting online. One great thing about the Australian Tax Office is their electronic tax return system, eTax, which is basically like an accountant on your computer. It works like an interview process and does all your calculations for you. It's really easy to use... it's just that tax is quite hard to understand. A lot of Australians pay between eighty and two hundred dollars for an accountant to do their tax return for them. This is because accountants know all these nifty little tricks to get you more money and some people manage to double or triple the amount they can get back. A lot of this is telling little "white" lies about how much money you earned or spent or whatever throughout the year in order to get the tax office to give you money back.

Now, I don't condone this. I consider it "cheating a bit". Others call it "working the system" and I have to admit those crazy little rules that all the accountants know about must be there for a reason. Whatever, I quickly realised the benefit of knowing these things when I discovered that our combined house-hold income took us just over the threshold beyond which we would have to start paying a Medicare Levy Surcharge.

Emergency-treatment-only Reciprocal-medical-care-my-bottom Medicare Levy Surcharge Rip-off

The Medicare Levy Surcharge is a strange and mysterious creature. Let me try to explain. Medicare is Australia's version of the NHS, only some argue not as good and, as my tax return is evidence of, not as free. Whereas in the UK we pay a pittance of National Insurance towards NHS, in Australia you get charged a Medicare Levy. I would expect this to come out of my PAYE tax but it didn't seem to happen this year. Now, if you earn over a certain amount and don't have a private health fund then you also have to pay a Medicare Levy Surcharge. Confused? Me too. Even if you do have a private health fund you still have to pay the Medicare Levy, I guess because emergency healthcare is operated by Medicare and you never know when you might need it. However, if you are a temporary resident, as I was for 4 months of the last tax year, then you are not entitled to Medicare, unless you're from a country with reciprocal healthcare, such as UK, in which case you're entitled to emergency treatment but not doctors bills or anything like that. But you still have to pay the levy (because you are entitled to emergency treatment) and, if you earn over a certain amount, the surcharge. Sound fair? I didn't think so.

I don't actually earn over that amount, or at least I didn't last tax year. And I really couldn't understand why I was being charged the levy surcharge as Toby's income plus mine didn't push us over the threshold. I was very annoyed as it meant I was going to have to pay $400 extra to the tax office, which I hadn't planned on doing. All for a service I'd hardly used and wasn't entitled to full use of all year anyway, and I couldn't understand it as my tax return last year had a very different outcome.

Reducing taxable income, sometimes known as rorting understanding the tax system

After spending hours looking at it and tweaking some figures I finally figured out what it was. The interest I had earned on my savings account, plus my salary, plus Toby's took us a few dollars over the threshold. What to do? The interest was less than the amount I was going to have to pay the tax office. It didn't seem fair but I really wasn't sure about not claiming it. I went back and looked over my deductions. This is the interesting thing about Australian tax. You can actually reduce your taxable income by claiming deductions and if your "other work-related expenses" are less than $300 then you don't have to produce receipts, which just seemed crazy to me. You can also claim donations to charities. I had already depreciated my laptop and claimed for some PC magazines that were sitting on my shelf. I then remembered I'd bought software to run on my laptop and figured I could probably add that in, and what if I'd bought magazines earlier in the year but had since chucked them out? I made a quick calculation as to how many there may have been and before I knew it had worked out that I had $298 worth of work-related expenses. And what do you know? It brought us back down to below the threshold and all of a sudden the tax office owed me $77!! Now I know why it's worth investing in an accountant. Goodness knows what else they would have thought of.

So the craziness is that just over $300 of interest was going to cost me almost $400 in tax, but less than $100 extra of expenses saved me about $500 in total. Tax sure is a crazy and complicated affair.

And just before I go I'd like to get back to the original statement, "in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes". On the ATO eTax interview there's a question as to whether you will have to submit a tax return next year. This raises some interesting points, not least of which is, does that mean that tax is not a certainty? Also, are there many Australians who can actually see into the future? And, if I say "no" does that mean it will become the case? Maybe I should have tried it.