Yesterday my ticket to see Britney Spears perform at the O2 Arena in London arrived. I bought it way back in December, nervously refreshing my email to get my presale passcode so I could get the best seat. Since then, over one million tickets have been sold, and all eight of the the London dates have been completely sold out. The ticket then had to be posted from England to my mum’s house (credit card billing address) in Australia and then she had to post it to Belgium, all before June 6. It arrived yesterday, so I will indeed be attending The Circus: starring Britney Spears next week.

I feel like I have grown up with her and shared in her many lows and highs. So many people are dismissive of her work, but she is able to make so many people happy and bring a smile to so many faces. I am so proud of her for working so hard, and so glad that I can share in her success. She is younger than I am, yet she has gone through so much more, living under a microscope since she joined the Mickey Mouse club when she was twelve. She has never had the luxury of making her mistakes in private. Yet she has this inner strength that helped her face her fears and doubts to rebuild her life.

The circus tour will be staged in three rings, and will include magicians, acrobatics, aerialists, martial artists, clowns, pyrotechnics and dancers. It will feature the songs Circus, Piece of Me, Radar, Gimme More, Ooh Ooh Baby, Hot as Ice, Boys, If U Seek Amy, Me Against the Music, Freakshow, Get Naked, Breathe on Me, Touch of My Hand, Do Something, Slave, Toxic, Baby One More Time, and Womanizer. The show will take just over one and a half hours, and she will be supported by Ciara.

There is something about Britney that makes her truly special. She has that indescribable “it” factor. People are always rooting for her, even when she was at her lowest lows. We genuinely want to see her succeed! We’ve seen her grow up in front of our eyes, and we love her – shortcomings and all. She may not be perfect, but that’s okay. She’s our Britney. ~ PerezHilton

We welcomed in 2008 on a flight back to Seattle, unaware that it would be our last year in the USA. We both worked very hard during out post-docs in medical science, and we both made novel discoveries and uncovered some of the mysteries of the development and function of white blood cells. Adrian had his work published in some excellent journals, and I learned that the paper from my post-doc “may be suitable for publication, pending revisions” in a great journal. Adrian has been offered a professorship, and I am investigating some interesting jobs in clinical trials. We experienced the freezing winters of the North that will never make me consider Canberra to be a cold city ever again.

I attended MacWorld and witnessed Steve Jobs give his last keynote and unveil the Macbook Air to the world. We explored more of the USA in dribs and drabs – Arizona, Nevada, California, and Hawaii – as well as exploring the Ukraine and Moldova.

The biggest issue that we faced in 2008 was the decision about where we would live in 2009. At first, it was between Maynooth (Ireland), London (UK), Montreal (Canada), and Brussels (Belgium). We visited all four places, and it came down to a battle between the two bilingual cities, Montreal and Brussels, and then Brussels won due to employment and travel opportunities. We celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary in the country that was to become our new home, and Adrian will starting his own lab at the University of Leuven from February 2009.

We finished up our post-docs in Seattle in November, made huge progress towards completing our Masters of Public Health degrees, and finished up the year visiting extended family in Australia that ranged from Brisbane to Adelaide. After nearly two years outside of Australia, we are able to see our birth country with new eyes, and appreciate its charms as well as its challenges. It is a country of relative compassion and opportunity, but is also isolated and monolingual. The weather is nearly always warm with blue skies and extraordinary wild-life, but the water crisis is hitting hard and many of the main rivers no longer reach the sea.

In a few weeks we fly off to Brussels, to begin our new home in Belgium. My goals for 2009 are:
- To find a short-term furnished apartment
- To get a residency permit
- To find a job
- To start learning Flemish
- To get a work permit
- To start my job
- To start learning French
- To buy a house

I think that’s enough to keep me busy for twelve months or so. It is a bit overwhelming to be faced with so many changes, but I realise how lucky that we are to have this opportunity, so the main emotion I feel is excitement. We had a great time in North America over the past two years, and while I think we are better suited to Europe, I am very thankful for all the happy memories that we have of the United States of America.

Ever since I first stumbled across Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn-Of-The-Millennium at the Australian National University Library as an undergrad, I coveted a stationery wardrobe. It is not, as Judith Martin remarks, dresses that don’t “capriciously change their fit through the years” (that, of course, would be a stationary wardrobe). It is a collection of writing paper for all occasions. For most of my years here in Seattle I have used Crane and Co to feed my stationery desires. They are American company who make their products from cotton, rather than wood pulp, and they supply paper for US bank notes and Tiffany & Co. Their envelopes are lined with bright colours and they carry many whimsical designs. However, this time I was looking for something a little more regal.

Our trip to London provided the incentive to first see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, and then visit the stationers that supply my Queen with her writing paper – Smythson of Bond Street. First established in 1887, they produce luxurious paper and leather goods. They were granted the Royal Warrant to Her Majesty the Queen in 1964, to HRH The Prince of Wales in 1980, and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh in 2002. When I visited the museum at the back of their flagship store on New Bond Street, I was able to see samples of this stationery, as well as that of the Maharajah (crests inlaid with mother of pearl) and Princess Diana (red and cream).

Smythson’s writing paper is available in a wide variety of colours and weights, ranging from Mayfair Smooth White to their distinctive Nile Blue. The Park Avenue Pink was premiered at the launch of their New York store, and Glen Clova green was created for the Queen Mother.  A gentleman at the store gave me a sample pack of their papers and cards to take home and ponder. I selected some correspondence cards for various occasions, writing paper in Cream Wove with a classic watermark, as well as a silver pencil with retractable lead. They packed it all up in those delightful blue boxes pictured at the top of this page.

Because Adrian knows me so well, and also because I am spoilt, on our anniversary he presented me with the pièce de résistance of my stationery wardrobe – my very own social card. The text engraved in Saint Germain script on a copper die, hand embossed in dark purple ink on Mayfair Smooth White board. A proper social card generally only contains the name, not the address or the telephone number. If more information is required, it is hand-written on the back. One of my favourite aspects of leaving a social card is that folding each particular corner forward carries its own specific message:

Turning the lower left corner indeed means that you are taking leave. When everyone knew this, and Pour prendre conge’ was as generally understood among Americans as RSVP is now, “P.p.c.” was sometimes also written on the lower left corner.

The gentleman was congratulating you on your new job. The upper right-hand corner is “P.f.,” for Pour fe’liciter. However, these abbreviations, if written, are always in the lower left. There is also “P.c.,” Pour condoler, for sympathy calls, for which the lower right corner is turned; and “P.r.,” Pour remercier, to thank, for example after being entertained at dinner the night before.

If the right corner is turned toward the face of the card, it means the card bearer has been there in person. However, that may also be expressed by turning the upper left corner, which means visite.