Yadda Yadda Yadda

I went to my 10 year high school reunion on Saturday night.
And it was absolutely fantastic!
I'm so glad it turned out so well. Because, I'm the one who organised it! And if it had gone bad then I'm sure people would have blamed me! But everyone seemed to have a great night and I've had a lot of positive feedback about how great the night was.
There were no weird dynamics, it was just people catching up with each other. I was so pleased. Everyone said they were so nervous, for a variety of reasons, but once we were there, all the old high school rubbish was such a non issue, and people just enjoyed themselves.
If you want to see photos from the night you can go here and check them out. There were too many to post, and frankly I'm lazy.

On Monday night Luke & I went to Readings in Carlton to hear Tony Martin do a reading of his new book A Nest of Occasionals. It was absolutely brilliant! Tony is not only very intelligent, but friendly and hilarious! His new book is a collection of stories that have happened to him over the years. He is a very gifted writer and the biggest nerd of all! In a good way of course. He also did a Q&A section at the end which was just wonderful. It was so good to be able to ask him heaps of questions we all wanted to know the answers to. Unfortunately he's been out of the media (largely) for the last 18 months or so (minus about 2 months) so there was lots to ask! Here are some photos from the event.

We also went dressed in capes! Well, bath-towels swirled around our necks anyway. It's a joke from the best radio show of all time, 'Get This' which Tony ran from 2006 - 2007, which he was axed for being too successful. Go figure. Anyway, one of the things they did was Capril. It's just a month where you wear a cape around for no other reason than it's Capril. So as a homage to Get This, we went caped! Got us some extra attention from Tony anyway :)



Hanging out with Tony Martin!


Luke hanging out with Tony.


Reading some of his book.


Reading some of his book.


Thanks for taking this awesome photo Luke...


More reading.


More reading.


Luke & I, capes donned!


He signed my book! The new one he just released.


He signed my other book! The first one of his I bought.

This is from an email about human trafficking and the chocolate industry. Good practical ways to do something and stand up for those with no voice!





The good news is that Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate bar in Australia will be Fairtrade as of Easter 2010! This means that there will be a significant increase in the sales of Fairtrade cocoa produced by farmers in Ghana. Fairtrade cocoa sales will increase for existing Fairtrade farming groups as well as opening up opportunities for thousands more farmers to benefit from the Fairtrade system.

Cadbury is the first mainstream chocolate company to announce that it will use Fairtrade certified cocoa for a main product line in Australia. Fairtrade certification sets standards by which the farmers growing the cocoa get a decent price for their produce and that exploited child labour is not involved.

Mars had previously announced that all of the cocoa it uses in its chocolate products will be certified as free of the involvement of trafficked people and slave-like labour by 2020 .

The bad news is by comparison to Cadbury and Mars companies such as Nestle have been unwilling to take adequate steps to address the exploitation of children on the cocoa farms and plantations.

Please write to Cadbury using the address below or through their on-line customer feedback at http://www.cadbury.com.au/Feedback.aspx:

Mark Callaghan
Managing Director Confectionary
Cadbury Schweppes Australia and New Zealand
PO Box 6134
St Kilda Road Central
Victoria 8008

Points to make in your letter or e-mail:
- Welcome the joint announcement of Cadbury and Fairtrade Labelling Australia and New Zealand that Cadbury Dairy Milk will achieve Fairtrade Certification in Australia by Easter 2010.
- Note that this will have the very positive outcome of significantly increasing sales of cocoa under Fairtrade terms for cocoa farmers in Ghana.
- Note that with this announcement Cadbury is leading action amongst the large chocolate manufacturers in Australia to address exploited child labour in the production of cocoa in West Africa.
- Request that Cadbury announce a timeline by which each of its product lines that contain cocoa will use only Fairtrade certified cocoa.

What you can do to turn the bad news into good news.