David's Journal on Tap

This year Marissa wanted to join the under 6 local soccer team. For the past few weeks she has been going to weekly training. This week the result of all that training came to be. Marissa and her team had their first game today and what a game it was.

The main thing is that the kids had fun, which I think they all did. The game was 40 minutes long, which was a good length. The players certainly got their fill of excercise which is much better than sitting in front of the TV.

Watching the game and cheering for the kids was great. While it took a while for both teams to work out which goal they were supposed to be kicking on and while there was not much strategy that all added to the fun of it. The kids enthusiasm and energy was contagious and it creates a good environment.

Marissa got a couple of good kicks in and she chased the ball most of the time. I say most of the time as there was one instance where she was excited to show one of the players on the other team her missing tooth. While this exchange was happening the ball rolled past Marissa and the other player and they were happy to carry on with their conversation with little regard for the ball.

Marissa is one of two girls on the team and I wonder why there is such disparity in the number of girls playing at under 6 level. I think there is a much higher representation of girls at the higher age groups but I am not sure. Regardless of gender, the kids are enjoying themselves and that is a win in itself regardless of score.

To start, I may be using the word ‘camping’ a bit loosely in the title of this blog post.

Camping in Phillip Island at Easter is not really ‘getting away from it all’. In fact given the number of cars we saw over the 5 days we were in Phillip Island going over the bridge – I think we were doing the opposite of getting away from it all and actually (to take a quote from Blur) following the herds down to Phillip Island [insert P.I. instead of Greece].

That being said we had a great time. We went with two other families who have kids in a similar age to ours and they all get along well. Even though I lost way too many card games of both 500 and 21 – the nightly cards games were fun as well.

You may remember we bought our monster 12 man tent last year and we have taken it to Wilsons Prom and Great Ocean Road so far. This time we borrowed a camper trailer to give it a try. It was so easy to set up and pack away – I think I spent more time reversing the trailer into our camping spot than it took us to set it up.

The camper trailer was a great idea. It could be something that we look into next year for ourselves. Back to the five days we were camping. We had mixed weather: some rainy days and some sunny ones as well. We took the kids to a Trout Farm on Good Friday where the girls both caught a fish which we had cooked up there. It could be the most expensive serve of fish and chips I think I will ever have in my life.

What else did we do? I think our break was a good mix of activities and also just kicking back a little bit. We went to a fair at Churchill Island on Saturday. Went bowling on Friday after our Trout Fishing adventure. Easter Sunday we had a easter egg hunt in the morning followed by a walk at the Koala Conservatory. Monday the kids spent the day at the beach and on Tuesday we packed up and headed home. In between this I have to say who ever created the jumpy pillow is a genius. I say this even though I did end up spilling my coffee all over myself trying to Joshua off the jumpy pillow at the campsite one day when it was raining and the pillow was wet. I am pretty sure our kids were there at some stage of every day bouncing around. It was great way for the kids to burn off some extra energy and for the parents to relax for a bit.

Next time – I would love to try the camper trailer again and this year I would like next to try the Grampians and if possible get to Tasmania as well. If we can get one of those two trips in the next 6-7 months I will be happy.

For those of you who read this blog, you will know I am a Social Media enthusiast. I utilise Social Media in my work, in my personal life – it touches just about everything I do in some form or another. About 12 months ago, with so many SM sites to use and update, it all became a bit too much for me to manage. I had to draw the line and make sure my days didn’t get sucked up into the abyss of SM.

If you look back in the archives you will see blog posts that I have written where I announced that I was closing my facebook account. While I enjoy SM – it was becoming too much for me to maintain too many SM sites. Facebook was good in its own right, but it did not give me the competitive advantage that other networks did and I was not really all that interested in what people were doing with Farmville or Mafia Wars. As for keeping in touch with family and friends – call me crazy, but the phone (skype) still works.

I know there are settings to limit the amount of feeds and updates that you get on Facebook but at the time it was easier for me to simply close my account and draw that line in the sand to help me monitor my SM usage.

I know when I need to eat humble pie and today setting up my new FB account, I certainly got a full serve of it. Today I reluctantly joined back up to FB. I would have liked to have thought that today when I set up my new Facebook account, it would be the event of all events but rather than setting up my profile with a bang I have re-joined facebook with more of a whimper.

So why did I rejoin FB? There are two main reasons: The first is as much as I use phone, email, messenger, twitter, etc…. to keep in touch with family and friends FB can be good to keep the channels of communication open with people that you don’t always speak to. There are some people who I used to speak to on FB that since I closed my account I do not think I have spoken to since. I would like to keep in touch with these people (as well as everyone else) but I don’t always have the time available to me. FB gives me the chance to keep in touch with people I don’t see or regularly interact with every day. The second reason is that I want to look at using FB for work. I have used FB in my role in the past but it has not really been effective. With some of the changes over the past 12 months I think there are some new apps that could be beneficial.

One thing that I want to do better this time around is better balance my work and personal connections. I don’t necessarily want to share pictures of my kids with my work connections and vice versa I am sure my family isn’t hanging on tender hooks (sp?) to find out what role I am hiring for. How do I balance this?? Any suggestions?

I may have been quick to close my account but I don’t regret closing my FB account last year, at the time for me it worked. Will FB be around in 5-10 yrs who knows but for the moment I am happy to jump back on this bandwagon, although I think in a more limited capacity than previously.

Oh my new FB profile is facebook.com/david.talamelli

(it still needs to be updated)