This is my entry for the @qurator Monday Missions... this week, featuring a different topic for a photo of each day of the week (sounds a bit like the Hungry Caterpillar...). Anyway, I was going to just do all the photos and little interesting blurbs in this post at the start of the week... I know how I do things, by the end of the week... I will have forgotten about this post!

Money

Australia was the first country to develop and deploy polymer (plastic...) currency in 1988 (the Australian Bi-centennial) to replace the paper bills. It's something that is still quite novel for many people around the world as quite a few countries have stayed with the paper bills. These notes were developed by the CSIRO (the Australian Government's Science Development wing...) in collaboration with the Reserve Bank of Australia (the Australian central bank...).... or was that the RBA in collaboration with CSIRO? No... Science before Money...

Anyway, it was developed to replace the old paper notes with a more secure and durable alternative... with the benefit that they are just so much more colourful and pretty than the drab paper alternatives that age really badly!

On release, there was the usual outcry of the sky falling in.... after all, the polymer notes would shrink if you put them in the oven. Or if you left a hot iron on it... Something that would NEVER happen with paper notes... they would BURN with FIRE and SMOKE, just like good money should!

Tea

I'm sure that this was a typo on the part of the contest organisers... this is not how you spell C-O-F-F-E-E! However, I will play along... on the off chance that that actually meant to write TEA...

I'm sure that most houses have this tea problem... Tea is the household equivalent of garden weeds. You are at the supermarket... tea costs a euro per packet, and it's supposed to be good for you... so you pick up a few different flavours to have on hand for when you want a hot drink without the delicious goodness and taste of Coffee.

However, upon trying out a single tea sachet... you find that it's horrible!... actually, we had one the other day that the whole family tried. In Dutch, it was called Zouthout (Sweet Wood...)... and it tastes like, sugared twigs... as if you bit a tree and then added sugar.

However, I digress... tea, you try one and then you put away the whole box for later... much much much much later... until you find that the horrible things have taken over the whole shelf and are starting to push out useful foods! I should try burning them....

What's in your fridge?

Oooooh... I got lucky on this! I had cleaned out the fridge yesterday in preparation for a big grocery shop today! So, it really looks like I have a clean and empty fridge all the time!

Sadly, in the clean up, you missed out on the half dozen lemon halves... my wife cuts a lemon to have in a hot drink every morning... and saves the other half in the fridge for the next day. I ask her why she doesn't just use the whole lemon... but apparently, it is too lemony! In practice, we end up with a million lemon halves in the fridge... in various states of mouldiness...

Something that is always there in the bottom of our fridge is a piece of Cuisse de Canard... a sort of French spiced preserved Duck... It's really handy for heating up quickly in the oven (about 10 minutes...) to stir through with pasta and some vegetables! A quick meal that is the adult upgrade to the instant noodles and canned tuna of student days!

Tree

From our back window... we have the least loved tree in our neighbourhood... well, I guess it is loved by the neighbour who actually owns it... but it hangs over two other neighbours (us included...) and completely shades another neighbour's garden... It is a great example of one person's "rights" and "freedoms" intersecting with other people...

The greatest annoyance to us is the fact that it drops sharp pine needles onto our grass... which means, when it is shedding needles (in windy weather... which happens quite often in The Netherlnads...)... it can be a bit of a painful walk in bare feet or socks in our back yard!

Party

It is a bit of a testament of a busy household with two parents both working and two kids away from extended family that some small tasks get relegated to the later later later category of priorities! Weeks ago, we had dressed up the house for one of our daughter's birthdays... and the decorations are still up! Probably I should take them down now... instead of writing this!

Shoes

Okay... the UGG boot is Australia's iconic indoors crappy sheepskin comfort-wear... that was how it was when I was growing up and I'm steadfastly going to remain that way. In recent years, it has become a trendy fashion icon (how....?????) and something that people wear outdoors... seriously, if water gets in there... it is going to be super uncomfortable!

However, the opinions of one random fashion challenged male seem to be on the losing side of things... my daughter's friends (who often speak their mind quite openly and bluntly....) keep asking why I'm wearing girl's shoes... and my students (who have on the most part learnt to differentiate between their inner and outer voices...) just look at me strangely when I answer the door wearing these comfy shoes...

Screw you all! These are not fashion icons... they are crappy indoor wearing comfy boots... what the hell is wrong with the world!

Sweet

Lastly... this is the view of the cupboard where the sweets are stored from the viewpoint of our youngest daughter. Unlike her older sister (who will stash and never eat her sweets...), our youngest will pig down anything and everything and then start laying claim to everyone else's goodies!

Each morning she will hazard an attempt for a sweet... and is weirdly surprised when we say "no". Nothing ventured, nothing gained I guess...

So, this is the view from her head height... it is the unattainable goal... sitting at the top, way out of reach of her little body... yet, if only she could stack together enough chairs... or corrupt and cajole the older sister... there would be an untold wealth of sweetness and sugary tooth decay awaiting!

Maybe I should a primed mousetrap up there as a lesson to prying hands...