Tan Family Blog

Our latest round of home renovations is complete, with some basic landscaping and fencing as pictured here. The children are enjoying the extra space in the new backyard, running around and kicking balls, although their favourite new game is running around trying to hit one another with the ball (I am to blame for that, just as well the balls are soft).

Anne and the children came to visit me during the school holidays: we spent six days together in Melbourne and another three back in Brisbane. Photos here.

A most excellent visit to Brisbane, striking just the right balance of activity and inactivity.

I am often asked how I cope with working in Melbourne while the rest of my family are in Brisbane. While on-call for the hospital over Valentine's Day weekend, I pondered this question again myself. There is no short answer, so read on only if you are interested in the long (but only so slightly longer than absolutely necessary) answer.

Only last month I was denouncing Apple products as overpriced, underpowered and anti-freedom. Yet, within the last two weeks, I have purchased not one but two Apple computers – a desktop and a notebook – both surplus to requirements and both at the more expensive end of the scale. I blame advertising.

Boardgaming is one of my guilty pleasures – never mind what the others are – and I enjoyed a decadent weekend in Canberra for the Australian Games Expo.

For the last two weeks, Anne has been busy screening applications and interviewing potential nannies. I am pleased to report that a decision has been made, and that the successful applicant is ...

We are well into the new year now, but when I walked in and asked to buy a near-top-of-the-line iMac, the salesman in the Apple Store must have thought it was Christmas all over again.

For the second time in a year, I destroyed the blog accidentally. This time, I felt that it was not worthwhile spending 1-2 hours restoring old content from 2008 and earlier. Instead, I have decided to start afresh with a new Drupal platform: the old Joomla! installation had become rather messy and I could not resist the opportunity to tinker with something new.

Since my last post in August 2008, much has happened although little has changed.