As I checked in to twitter to spy on see all my new #ausblogcon friends I was reminded by BektheWrecker that it’s Harmony Day today. It seems to me that this is something that escapes the notice of most Australians, unless perchance they have kids at school…  I would never have noticed otherwise but I’m delighted to have been reminded because Harmony Day is significant for me.

It’s my Oziversary. (I know… I bet you wish you had an Oziversary too, it’s an awesome thing reserved for those who weren’t born in Oztraya – but who became Australians unnaturally – which is called being naturalised. Please.Explain)

In honour of this most auspicious occasion, and given that today is in fact my 5th Oziversary and because I [hope I] have new readers who won’t have seen it before. I’m posting a link to the account of my ‘Citizenship Interview’ for your amusement,

It’s one of my favourites and it starts a little something like this…

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

The room is dark and the chair hard and uncomfortable beneath her.

From behind she can hear breathing, slow and steady.  Intimidating, almost terrifying, even.

She dare not move.

Closing her eyes, she offers up a silent prayer and opens them again, her eyes adjusting slowly to the dim. It’s light enough to see a desk before her, covered with documents like old exam papers sitting ready, a black biro to their left.

She waits.

To her left a clock ticks, marking a slow agonising countdown, one with no apparent end.

And still, she waits.

In the distance the sound of heavy feet approaching makes her catch her breath in fear…

Read More >> (srsly, read more!)

I’ve been a blogger for a long time.  Since 2oo4. How long is that? Lemme see.. Almost 7 years.

7 years.

It’s probably fair to say that this blog lives in a very quiet corner of the internet.  I have my faithful band of loyal readers (you know who you are) who have been following along, many of you, for all of those 7 years.  I have a few family members who pop up in the ‘visits’ from time to time to check in and see what I’m up to but given the constraints of the last couple of years of full time work/study and, heck, full time life, this blog, hasn’t get a great deal of attention, (and by that I mean from ME!)

So, I am actually kind of surprised to find myself where I am right now, in another quiet corner, this time in a Sydney Hotel filling in time between the last session of the Aussie Bloggers Conference and the dinner dance.  I am of course, completely free to claim the title Aussie blogger, though the scant attention paid might make a liar of me, but I haven’t to date, really connected a whole lot with the “Aussie Bloggers” community and after the great collection of people and stories I’ve heard today I’m horrified that I’ve left it so long!

I tweeted the above during the course of the afternoon as I was listening to the amazing stories these women (and men) told, of pain, of loss, of betrayal, of kids, of husbands, and even of anxiety, I was struck that the awesome thread that followed through all of those is of love and support, of friendship and of camaraderie that they’ve discovered in the blogosphere.

I think it’s true, people were made for connection and while the way we connect has changed through the years, the fact remains that even though we may have ‘met’ or discovered each other online, on twitter, via our blogs there really is nothing that compares to having real life faces and hands and hugs to put skin on the names that have come across my twitter or RSS feeds from time to time.

So if you’re visiting from the #ausblogcon drop a comment in the box to say Hi. And if you’re an Aussie Blogger who wonders if you’re missing out by not being here… make sure you get a place for the 2012 conference.  This thing is only going to get bigger!!