So instead I present to you… a completely self-indulgent list of things I think are cool which I discovered throughout the year. Stop reading now if you are after some well-thought-out reflections.

Here are some things that brought joy into my life in 2011:

Eat & Drink:
- Sunday afternoon music at Cloudland. A light-filled fantasy garden sanctuary amidst the dark Fortitude Valley seedy-ness
- MoVeda Bar de Tapas, Melbourne CBD
- Babimpup at Hong Depot Korean BBQ in West End
- Kimono Sushi, Melbourne St, South Brisbane
- Swampdog: new gourmet Fish & Chips joint on Vulture St, South Brisbane
- The End, new-ish bar on Vulture St where Trash Video used to be, has their own amazing locally brewed beers
- Kerbside, a mishmash of used furniture and random stuff in a warehouse filled with the biggest collection of beers and wines in Brisbane Fortitude Valley, with very well-dressed staff
- Russian Market in Phnom Penh (also shopping)
- Doi Chang Coffee, Thailand, especially their cafe in Chiang Rai
- Kinyei Cafe, Battambang, Cambodia (http://www.kinyei.org/projects/kinyei-cafe)
- Brews Brothers, micro-brewery in Wooloongabba, make your own beer that’s actually guaranteed to taste awesome
- Soy Flat-White on a cup of ice @ Blackstar Coffee Roasters, especially when Alan pours it

Read, Listen, Watch:
- Everything Belongs, book by Richard Rohr
- In The Name Of Jesus, really short book Henry Nouwen (thanks to my dad)
- Mission Bell CD, by Amos Lee
- The Big Issue magazine
- Peppa Pig (Mali’s favourite cartoon on ABC iView)
- It Might Get Loud, a guitar doco with Jack White, The Edge and Tommy Page
- GOMA (Queensland Gallery of Modern Art), especially when The Quadratic Contingency performed live to Alfred Hitcock’s films
- Feet Teeth, post-jazz improv’s from Brisbane
- Jimmy Watts Band, soulful blues
- Dave Carter, gritty bluesman & recording/mastering engineer extraodinare responsible for UnConvention Brisbane

Other:
- Occupy Brisbane
- The awesome/troubled sincere daggy/funky people (like me) at St Andrew’s South Brisbane
- Cigar Heaven, Moorooka
- Community Orientation Course (Waiters Union, West End) – exploring how to live as Christ would amongst the marginalised in a local community in Brisbane
- Pants To Poverty briefs for men and ladies (New Internationalist Online Shop)
- Phil & Ted’s double decker pram
- Multi Track Song Recorder app for iPhone. Free 4-track recorder
- Servants, a group of people incarnating Christ by living with the poorest of the urban poor around the world (www.servantsasia.org)
- Wishbone Bike, buy your kid a trike when they are 2 and convert it into a pre-bike they can use until they’re 5
- Mali’s awesome Day Care called Kids @ West End
- Vein Shoes on Adelaide St, CBD
- Meeting Barry Peters (www.barrypeters.com.au) at a songwriting workshop at TEAR Victoria conference on Philip Island
- Mekong Minority Foundation, local hilltribe-run development NGO in Chiang Rai, Thailand
- Maton Guitars

Enough. I forgot to put my friends on the list, but you know who you are. None of the above actually means anything without people like you. Thank you. Have a lovely New Year filled with joyful moments! Would be fun to hear your list too, if you wanna share. Cheers

You may remember that Rachel, Mali and i went away for 6 weeks earlier this year to Thailand and Cambodia, and we asked you to keep us in your thoughts and prayers on the journey. Well we had an amazing few weeks, thank you! and we were seriously thinking about going back to Thailand a period of time to live and work there, and for Rachel and Mali to learn the culture and language more.

Our rough plan was to come home for a couple of years and save up some money or maybe get a house first and then go back. But a few weeks before we left Bangkok we saw a pharmacist position at a Burmese-run clinic in Thailand through AVI (Australian Volunteers International, an AusAid funded organisaition) advertised and just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. So we went for it, and after a long process of interviews, training, health checks and etc, we are happy to report that we have been approved to go in February 2012 for 2 years!

This is good for many reasons. It is good for you because we won’t be asking you to sponsor us with money. It is also good for you because you now have a very good excuse to come to Thailand or a neighbouring country in the next 2 years!!! In fact we’ve already got some visitors booked in for 2012. By making the journey to Thailand you will be playing a very important role in our journey: support from home. We’re really looking forward to this away-from-home adventure, but we know how much we will miss everyone here. So please let us know nice and early if you’d like to come and visit so that we can try and accommodate you and/or travel around with you. Also let us know if you’re planning to be near Thailand because we have to get out of the country and re-enter every 3 months to stamp our visas anyway. We will be a couple of hours away from Chiang Mai.

My assignment is to get alongside the pharmacy staff at Mae Tao Clinic, Mae Sot, Tak Province, Thailand, and hopefully improve some inventory and clinical issues. There’s also a doctor and a social worker from Melbourne starting at the Clinic at the same time. Rachel will try her hands on being a full-time mum for a bit, although many people reckon that her background in financial counselling will be highly sort-after by NGO’s in the region. Mali is looking forward to Thailand, and insists she already knows how to speak Thai.

Not much else to say, except that we’d like to catch up with you before we leave in early February. Otherwise we’ll be online pretty regularly so please keep in touch and let us know what’s happening in your world.

Have a safe holiday & a lovely New Year

Peter (+ Rachel, and Mali)

Rachel and I got married about 8 years ago. We lived in a unit in Highgate hill for a couple of years before travelling through Asia and work holidaying for a year in Europe. While we were in London for 8 months we soon discovered that sharing was the only way for us to live in a nice clean place in a funky area. So we did. Fortunately we found a clean, friendly Japanese housemate who cooked us yummy food and watched quirky films with us. It was a great experience sharing a 2-bedroom flat with her.

When we returned to Brisbane, we were determined to try sharing a house. I jokingly suggested to a friend about sharing with hi and his wife.. they said Yes! So we suggested to the local Anglican church that they should find a smaller place for one of the ministers and have 2 couples renting their beautiful 4-bedroom Queenslander with 3 lounge rooms in West End at $520 instead. It was an awesome 18 months paying less than each couple would have in a unit by themselves. We shared all the bills except food. We had parties with common friends and new ones. Downside.. there’s only one toilet and shower. But I think we made it work pretty well. Also it was a bit hard when I was recording an album while my housemate John was trying to study. Sorry about that, dude.

During that time we got to know some awesome people in the area who were also considering house-sharing, or as some call it, intentional/communal living. We met with a few people over a couple of months to form ideas around what we wanted to see happen. We came up with a number of words to describe the values that would be important to us as a household. And so we moved into another property owned by the church.. The Beacon, Highgate Hill. This was a massive place with 3 bathrooms & 3 toilets! Ooh yeah. It also had a pool, massive yard with SO MUCH room for a vegie garden, 5 bedroom upstairs and 2 bedroom downstairs.. plus  garage for 2 cars. We started the household with 2 couples (rachel + myself and an English couple who’ve been living in west end) plus 2 single girls. Times passed. We had short and long term visitors stay.. Then when we were face with 2 empty rooms we asked a friend who had 2 little boys if she might like to move in downstairs! Oh and that was also around the time when Mali (our daughter) came along. So yeah we went from 6 adults to 5 adults + 3 children (and a dog) in a couple of weeks. It was crazy. It was amazing. I could tell you so many priceless stories.. another time. We shared all bills & food. We grew vegies and brewed beer. We dumpster-dived. We played putt-putt in the yard with the boys. We hosted film nights, parties, and charity gigs. We even hosted a dinner with the local MP candidates (K Rudd and the Liberal lady didn’t show, but Emma-Kate Rose from the Greens did). A few more housemate-changes occured, and the house is still going strong today.. without us. We really treasure our time at The Beacon. Everybody who lived there taught us so much about how to live together in close proximity, about compromise and hospitality, but also how to be realistic about what your strengths and weaknesses are.

Okay it’s 1am now. I’m sitting in a smaller house we share with Rachel’s sister and her husband in West End since January this year. It only has one bathroom, but it has a beautiful yard. I think our little girl has missed hanging out with the boys back at The Beacon and I was certainly missing the pool over the summer. In 5 weeks there will be a new baby in the house. He is not ours. But he will be sharing this house with us. So we will get to know what it’s like to put up with other people’s baby crying in the night! Rent is around $280 for each of the 2 families.. and we get the convenience of being just up the road for most of our local friends, Rachel’s folks, daycare, awesome vietnamese food, Orleigh Park, the 199 bus (best bus in inner city brisbane!!!!) and Blackstar. And now we share all the bills, including food. Yes, it also means we each only have to cook twice a week maximum. And no we don’t own a car anymore. Other pluses include a brother-in-law who makes awesome coffee on his machine & appreciates a good single-malt scotch, having someone to entertain Mali while I go to the loo (when Rachel isn’t home), not having to buy half the stuff we needed for the house. And I just love the conversations and laughter we have together around the dinner table and in the kitchen.

What next? I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t think I’d like to go back to living in a little $350 unit somewhere with no yard, and paying for our own everything. And cooking all the time. Anyway I’m off to bed now, just hoping I don’t wake the couple across the hall way up.

‘Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animal, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better everyday. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love’

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, ‘The Brothers Karamazov’

have a love-ly week, my friends

From early March to mid April this year Rachel, myself and our little girl Mali will be travelling around Thailand and Cambodia. It’s mainly a holiday, but thanks to some friends at TEAR & Servants, we also have a chance to visit a couple of groups trying to make a difference to in a sustainable way:

1. Mekong Minority Foundation in Northern Thailand (in and around Chiang Rai & Nan provinces, http://minorityleadership.org/). These guys ‘aims to equip, train and empower marginalised people to develop sustainable solutions to the complex problems that impact their communities. Due to globalisation and modernization, tribal communities are facing unprecedented issues of poverty, transmigration, trafficking and exploitation, debt and environmental destruction’

Can you find where we're gonna be, Mali?

2. TASK (http://www.task.org.kh/). They work in ‘Mean Chey District, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which is one of the poorest Districts in Phnom Penh. It has a population of about 200,000 people. The majority of these people are Khmer, some Vietnamese, and a minority of Cham (Khmer Muslim). TASK works with approximately 2500 people per month through a range of integrated health and development projects’

I would really appreciate your thoughts & prayers for us over the next 6 weeks as we travel on planes, trains, buses, taxis & tuk-tuks. More importantly I hope we will learn more about these places and people, and the projects that are empowering them to look after their families & communities for the long run, and how we might be able to partner with them in the future.

You are our friends, and I value your input in our lives. Whether you are agnostic, atheist, christian, buddhist, liberal, conservative, reformed, socialist, capitalist, charismatic, catholic, orthodox, emergent, evangelical, anglican, presbyterian, anarchist, green, labour, muslim, hindu, jewish, single parent, rich, poor, gay, lesbian, hetero, metro, emo, normal, weird, black, white, yellow, red, brown, aussie, indigenous, .. you are our friends, and I appreciate you sparing a thought or saying a prayer for us.

Thanks heaps & hope to catch up soonish!
Peter

Anyway I better go, before a gang of private school lads beat me up for my iPhone

The clean up has begun. Let’s remember the stench, dirt, mud & horror. Let’s make our environment better by living more simply and responsibly.

I appreciated it. And if I may, I think I would add this:

‘and here’s a hoping we can look at the present in the eye with total attention, surrender, and without judgment’

Have a wonder-full 2011, my friends

There’s nothing quite like listening to good music while driving to somewhere you don’t really wanna go to. It helps you to endure the duration of the trip, and then leaves you with a tune you can hum in your head.. a little buffer of rhythmic sub-consciousness beneath the grinding of the day.. especially if you find it difficult to be present, living in the now, like me.

So it’s REALLY cool when the songs themselves help you to remember the present (the now)- and the present (the gift)of everything. The love, the intelligence that is beyond textbooks and seminars, holy books and preachers, creeds and deeds.. Rachael Brady is one beautiful human being who writes such songs. I thank her. I thank the Creator for creating through her. For like her, we all have gone our own way, forgetting that we are children of the One. Prodigal children unite and forgive, untie the self-inflicted strings around our feet and believe.

As my good friend Aaron Nebaeur always says: It’ All A Miracle. Recieve it.