Archive for June, 2007

How to find baby change rooms in Australia

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

If you’re a new parent like me, you no doubt find baby change rooms (aka parent rooms) in shops and malls invaluable. I recently discovered that you can use the Australian Government’s National Public Toilet Map website (what a great site!) to find change rooms too, although it’s a little convoluted. Here’s how:

  1. Go to the Public Toilet Map site.
  2. Under the Find option, click Near an address, At a point of interest, or At a latitude/longitude.
  3. Click the More Options button at the bottom of the page. The same form reappears, but with more options.
  4. Enter your search details at the top of the form, such as address or point of interest.
  5. Under Toilet Features, check the Baby Change box.
  6. Click the Find Nearby Toilets button at the bottom of the page.
  7. You’ll now see a list of all nearby toilets that have baby change facilities. Under Toilet Details, you can click a toilet link to get full info on the toilet – you should see a baby change icon under Features.

Now they just need a way to rate the baby change rooms out of 10! 🙂

Books, the Dalai Lama, and how to calm a screaming infant

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

I’ve been a bit slack at the old blogging over the last couple of weeks. This is mainly due to the Photoshop book I’m co-writing, which is sucking up all my time and energy like a black hole. Who’d have thought a 700-page book would take two people 7 months to write. (Ooh, that’s a cosy 100 pages per month!) Well it’s nearly finished now, so soon my life will return to relative normality.

We did manage to snatch half a day off yesterday, and head into the city – with me carrying Zack in the Hug-a-Bub – to watch the Dalai Lama in the Domain (a big park in Sydney). The rain was coming down in sheets so we weren’t expecting much of a turnout, but it was pretty busy. Nice to see the man in person, even if it was on a big-screen monitor from half a kilometre away! He talked about inner peace, dialogue, 9/11, religion and a lot of other stuff that I couldn’t really hear properly. (The rain pelting on umbrellas didn’t help!) He was asked lots of questions from the audience – some good ones, and some daft ones, such as “What can we do to stop our drought?” To which he replied, “You should know better than me!” and laughed his head off. (more…)