General Chat

Hi all

I think it becomes more difficult to make friends as you get older ..... so it's harder at say 40 than 30, etc. But being retired makes it that little bit more difficult.

We have little family here. OH's sister emigrated here 2 years after we arrived ............... but got a teaching job in a town about 800 km away. She's still there, and after teaching for 30 years, retired, re-trained, and is now the Anglican minister in the town.

My niece came out for a holiday when she was 21, was taken out by a friend of ours who thought she might enjoy going to a night club, and that we wouldn't be likely to do that (with a 4-month old, he was probably right!!). They married about 18 months later. Lived in Vancouver, and we did a lot of things together .... but then the marriage broke up. We stayed friendly with both of them, but niece then moved to about 1 hour away so it became more difficult to see her. She died in February 2009, and it seems to be impossible to keep in contact with her daughter.

Most of the friends that are MY friends are ones that I made at work, and we have basically lost contact since we all retired. We do have some vey good joint friends ................. but the very best friends are the ones who live "away" ............ it takes a 2 hour ferry ride to see them!

Like so many of you, I don't drive, so have to use buses, or ask OH to take me.


I don't feel lonely though, I like being by myself .... whether it is spending time on the computer (hours every day!), reading or knitting.

OH would like to get back to having people for dinner, which we used to do a lot ....... but honestly I used to find that we often had people to dinner, but never went to their houses. They always seemed glad to come here, but ........


I also find having people in now tires me out, and I get into a lot of pain ...... OH says he will do everything, and I just have to sit, but somehow I end up walking back and forwards getting things, serving things, preparing things that he's forgotten, etc

It then takes me days to recover.


Let's enjoy the internet friendships that we have!


sylvia
xx

wow thats a lot of chatting while I was asleep,
and I see the conversation has flowed from educ. through knitting and craft to retiring friends!
Looks like I have more in common than I thought with people here - cardmaking and quilting are my other favs, have made quite a few cards for Christmas this year and its time to get in the post early next week.

Sylvia
you are talking about having friends over for a meal, in fact last night we had a couple our age for an easy meal. OH cooks the meat on the bbq and we came inside to eat as there were so many bugs outside. I made a potato bake and friends brought coleslaw and juice to drink. so we put it all together, and it turned out easy enough. But I hadnt seen them for ages even though their son graduated with ours a couple of weeks ago. They both still work; in stressful jobs; so usually on the weekends they relax and recover. It was a good time and they left on 930pm so it didnt get too late for any of us.

Well family arent too great at keeping in contact either. My siblings are all over Australia. Two brothers way down in Tasmania, my sister up in Queensland, and another brother in Adelaide. So I rarely get to see them, although I try phoning about once a month. it seems here I do all the contacting too. Anyway they cant say I dont try. OH family is around here. His brother is on the family farm, his sister in town. We get to see more of them when things arent going well too!!

But we did enjoy our niece's wedding at the end of October and caught up with lots of OH rellies there.

But I am so glad I can still drive; I think I would go crazy if I couldnt get out; so realize how hard it is for those of you who have to rely on transport. I guess it will eventually come to that for me, and I hope thats a far way off. Until then I have to have a medical assessment each year around my birthday to prove Im still capable, as I have a pacemaker.

we have had so much rain here over the last week it s incredible. It has to be a result of the climate changing. Its either going to be flooding or fires. and I know Id rather cope with a flood than with fire. We had bush fires close by last year and it was terrifying, the smoke and heat and not knowing where to go. Fortunately we werent in dangers way, but we still had the orange smoke for weeks.
not sure how I would manage in your snow, and Im sure that has its panic too.

Annette

Ann in Glos
you asked me what parking costs for the Big City are.

3 years ago I had to go to Melbourne for pacemaker change, we drove down, a 4 hour trip.
We put out car in the hospital multi level car park for 24 hours and it cost us $24 aus.
OH said that's a rip off and so he drove our car out to friends place, and parked it in front of their house, then came back an hour by train to the hospital.

The train journey back cost him $5, and it goes on how many sections the trip is.
Since I was in for 3 days it was better to do it that way he said. Because he had a lovely room close by the hospital to stay he wasnt traveling back and forth.

Shopping parking is a different situ, as there are meters of hourly parking in some places, I think one puts $4 in the meter.
At the airport there are ticketing machines on a timer, dropping off or picking up is about $4. Ive got no idea how much it is to park for a while as we never do that.

Here in our regional city parking is free for certain amounts of time. Say 2 hours. A guy comes around and marks the back tyre with chalk when you park, and when he comes back in 2 hours and the car hasn't moved then one gets a parking fine.
That's how it works here in our town.
But i understand that most small towns in Aus have free parking.

Best wishes
Annette

Hi Annette

where abouts are you?

We spent a year in Melbourne in 1975/76, at LaTrobe University, so did a lot of travelling around Victoria every weekend that we could

......... but I have a cousin-in-law and his second wife still living in Bendigo, having moved there about 6 or 7 years ago from Ballarat, after his first wife died and he re-married. My cousin (his sis-in-law) and husband who lived in Bendigo (hence why Fred moved there) moved back to Melbourne about 2 years ago, getting into some sort of Seniors Housing. They are around 86 now, and I think still had a lot of friends in Melbourne from the 40+ years they lived there.

My other cousin, who was also living in Bendigo around 2006, moved up to Queensland about a year later to be closer to a daughter, and then lost her husband last year.


We were last in OZ in 2006 ............. we flew into Perth, spent time there, then took the train across to Adelaide, rented a car and drove to Bendigo. Had 3 days in Bendigo ..... the 2 cousins and Fred were then living there and we had to be sure to have equal time with each of the couples! That meant a huge meal every night, each one taking turns to cook. Thank heavens it was late September, and quite cool, 'cos 2 of them cooked English-style roast meat meals, Fred and his wife did an Aussie-style bbq ..... but then Bev is an Australian. The others all immigrated from England in the late 50s / early 60s on the £10 scheme.


Since I had experience of what it might be like to stay with one or other of them, we booked ourselves into a motel in the centre of town, so we could get some quiet and "our" time! It was right next to the Deborah Mine, if you know that ..... and I took the chance to take OH down there. The cousins had taken me down the mine in 2000 when I came down on my own ................. celebrating my early retirement.

And, of course, Bendigo Pottery .......... which we have loved since we first saw their stuff back in 1975.

Then we drove back to Adelaide, and got on The Ghan to go all the way up to Darwin ........... where we met up with our best friends from Canada. We then met up with those same friends almost 3 weeks later in Sydney, and spent time during our last 2 or 3 days doing some things with them

........... one of them said at dinner on the evening before they left (one day before we left) "How nice it is to be with old friends ............ you can make a comment and don't have to explain it!".

They had gone from Darwin to a tour in Kakadu, then took The Ghan to Alice Springs ............. the wife wanted to take her husband to Ayers Rock (Uhuru), having been there herself back around 1972.

She was mightily disappointed in it.

Her description of "now" at Uhuru made me change my mind .... it was still on my list of things to do ............... now replaced with Kakadu, although that I think is mere wishful thinking now as I find it more and more difficult to walk for any length of time.


We meanwhile flew to Brisbane, went up to Pomona, then down to Mudgee, and finally to Sydney ... visiting friends and relations along the way. The relations in Pomona have just (this week) moved the Hervey Bay on the coast.


There is still a faint hope that we might be down again about August next year ................ the International Botanical Association is meeting in Melbourne. They only meet once every 6 years, but OH is not finding anything in their programme that attracts him ........ so I'm not sure whether we will still build a 6-week visit around the 10-day meeting.

Plus, of course, we now have our grandson ................... and it costs much money to cross Canada to see him, so there are other calls on our "travel fund" now.

We might have to save up for another year


On the other hand, the 3 surviving cousins and Fred, are not getting any younger. The youngest is 82, and we'll have to come down there if we want to see them.



sylvia
xxx

wow Sylvia, you have got around our big wide land. Im sure you have got lots of photos memories.

we have been living near Albury/Wodonga which is on the Murray river for the past 17 years. My OH family is from this area, and when his father was very ill we moved here from Sydney to help out. our first 2 children were born in Sydney.

However, joy oh joy , I grew up in Qld Hervey Bay, and that's where my sister still lives.
I really hope your rellies enjoy living there. Have they moved into one of the many retirement villages that are there?
My sister said it is teeming with rain there too this week.

We have taken a few trips, one I fondly remember was a road trip along the great Ocean road from Geelong to Portland. We did this in May when it wasn't too cold yet. But our visit to Bendigo was so cold, still the boys had fun panning for gold at the historical village.

Yes I have heard that visiting Uluru isn't so great these days, as the Aboriginal Trust has now forbidden anyone entering or climbing on the rock.
When my uncle did a trip many years ago, people were still able to climb up with the aide of the chain rope. Not so any more.
But as you say Kakadu is a tourist friendly place and my parents really enjoyed the boat trips in the gorge on the very last trip that they ever did.

Best wishes
Annette
in Albury AUS

actually what got to my friend was not the inability to climb the rock

but the sheer numbers of people there.


It was all so commercialized


She said it was row after row of big coaches, hundreds of people, folding chairs being brought out, glass of champagne served as the sun rose or sun went down ......... very much to rote!


They did just take a day trip out from Alice, didn't stay out there.


But it was so very different from what she experienced back in 1972.



The cousins took me along the Great Ocean Road in 2000 ........ I can't remember whether we did it in out little VW Beetle back in 1975 / 76 ............ we did drive all the way across the Nullarbor to Perht and back in that little white car, with an 18 month old perched on sleeping bags in the back seat!



yes, lots of memories and photos.



sylvia

I posted on this thread this morning thinking that it was a new message!! My eyes must be frozen together not to have noticed ,,,,I wonder if anyone read it,???

sorry Bridget
cant find your message
what did you say?

but off to do jobs now Ill check in tomorrow
Annette

Oh my goodness the costs are astronomical in Canada for higher education. When I trained as a nurse, we lived in residence and were fed and housed. Had to buy our own uniforms, thanks to my parents I survived on about $100 a month for 3 years.
Now my daughter, the costs for her to complete her degree were unbelievable, mercifully as she has dependents and has a learning disability, she has received some assistance. She's now enrolled part-time in the Masters progrmme for Applied Disabilities Studies, by the time she is finished, her debt load will be over $30,000.
A higher income should result, but she has yet to find a full-time job.
We had snow on Wednesday and now it's sunny and all the snow has gone. The ground is frozen solid I think, temps are pretty low. Across the Nigara river, in Buffalo, they have been hit hard and many motorists stranded for over 12 hours on a busy section of one of the highways.
One of my friends and her husband have a landscaping business here, and have a truck with big snow plow on the front (his winter job). They drove to the border to volunteer to help clearing snow in Buffalo, were in an interview room for 1/2 hour before being sent home. I am absolutely floored that volunteers cannot show their (extended) community spirit without being suspected of ulterior motives. They were apparently told that there was concern that someone might offer to pay them, and that would detract from local workers. Well, where were the workers? The snow was still sitting there.
I found this really sad, they gratefully accepted lots of volunteers from here in the aftermath of 9/11. Now they are a threat?
I fear it will be a long time before my friends offer to help again.
Mary

I have been a member of GR since 2004 and I think the heart has gone out of these boards in the past year or two. I agree with the OP who I talk to regularly on another thread. Although there always seem to have been a few troublemakers on GR.

I recently had an argument with a jumped up GR member who acted like a self appointed moderator. I do not like being told what to do by someone who has not authority to do so.

The thing is these troublemakers like to cause trouble but if you retaliate they report you for it. I only post on 1 thread mainly now.

I'm sorry to hear that Benjamin. Please keep posting after all you're a paying member too. I'm sure there are people who you will enjoy talking to on other threads here :)

Benjamin, the best way to deal with these people is to ignore them, or say to yourself that they must be very unhappy people with no friends Please dont let them put you off posting as we need more men in the mix for proper debate. You have a different viewpoint which is often relevant.

For Ann in Glos - Try Saga Zone, far more interesting than this part of Genes. Everytime I log on here (at most once a week) there's the same old topics in the same old order and the same old people.. Far better debate on the Zone

Been on Sagazone...some very nice people ( some from here ;) ) but also the same small minority of rascist, bigoted, sleazy types lol ( "do I want to get naked"? ermm nooooo lol)

Take it from me the debates there get just as heated! There are as many boring threads, as many interesting, as much trivia, as much intellectual conversation :)

It IS quiet on here at the moment, but it is pretty much the same everywhere...except money saving expert.com ...which has some very busy forums ( craft etc) .

Hello everyone, can I jump in and say that finally I'm getting a little more confident about joining threads although I sometimes seem to kill them off. I have only been a member since February this year and I have found the majority of people to be very warm and welcoming. I don't get out much in the evenings and these boards have become a kind of social life for me. (Hope that doesn't make me sound like a sad individual). I have made great progress with my family tree thanks to so many on here and enjoy reading all the boards.

Cath xx

Night to all

Cath xx (thread killer) lol.

Night Cath xxx

Goodnight Cath...night night John John XXX BC

ps...Them Saga forums are scarey!! lol

Hello Ann - and everyone else! I rarely come on here now. As you've said, in the past there have been so many arguments etc. that I just had enough and stopped posting. I often "pop in" and read threads, but rarely post.
It's a shame, as most of the people on here are really nice.
Anyway, hope everyone's keeping well. Take care.
x

No, you havent killed the thread, Catherine. Some come to a natural end. Nice to see you anyway, keep adding and put a topic on sometime, even a daft one will get things going.