Murray Ceff's Blog

Impressions of China and Hong Kong Where do I start? What was meant to be a family holiday for the Ceff family in the US, turned in to a brief 4 day stopover in Hong Kong and China for me, on my way to London, to meet up with Margot, Miriam and Josie. My intial impression of Hong Kong, arriving late on Wednesday night, was the very organized way they cope with foreign visitors. From the airport, an express train took me to Kowloon Station, just stopping once along the way. Then at the train station there was a free shuttle bus that took visitors directly to their hotels, and of course there were always staff looking for confused foreigners who did not know their way around. I was actually very fortunate on the flight from Melbourne to Hong Kong to sit beside a young English lady, named Sara, who lives in Hong Kong. She treated me like an elderly gentleman and made sure I got through immigration properly and then made sure I knew where to get on a train. So I was dro...

Just recently I have started a new job. I am working as a sales representative, out on the road, for one of Australia's largest physical therapy supply companies. It been quite a few years, maybe ten, since I have been in a front line position like this, day after day (well to be honest it's only 2 1/2 days a week) out knocking on doors to sell the message and products. I am doing one other job for them before I actually get out on the road. That is proof reading their website. There are quite a few typos on it, and I am very particular about these things. One would not publish a book with this many typos and often the first exposure someone may have to the company is their website. As the old saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. So I think it is important that it is right. There are some obvious parallels to the Church here. The Church has invested a lot of resources in to building up what is most likely the best online presence of any Church on t...

The Primary President spoke in Sacrament meeting in our ward today. Early in her talk she mentioned that she had a journal that she had written in 3 times. She had bought the journal nine years ago, I guess full of intention to write in it more regularly. I can relate to that very well. I started writing this blog with the hope of writing regularly and having it take the place of my journal. I did fairly well for the first few weeks I think, but I seem to be fairly rapidly falling back in to my old habits. I am not a natural writer. I think I am better at speaking than writing. But perhaps if I persevere at the writing I will get better. I am reminded of the scripture in Ether 12 that talks about our weaknesses becoming our strengths. I think I had better write quite a lot to get this weakness to become a strength.

Just a short note to let you know that my mother died very early in the morning (about 1.00am) of June 22, 2011. She was 83 years old at the time. The funeral service is to be held at St Andrews Uniting Church, Sydney Pde, East Geelong at 2.30pm on Monday 27 June. She went peacefully, after a few days of being barely conscious. My sister, Laurel, was with her at the time. We took turns in staying with her since 2.30am on the previous Sunday. I was there within a few minutes of her dying and I stayed with her until the undertaker came to collect her body. It was a relief to know that she has gone somewhere better. I hope and believe that her parents, who have been sealed in the Temple, were there to take her to her heavenly home.

My mother (Jean Shirley Riach Ceff) is 30 years older than I am. She is 83 and I am 53, so she turns 84 on April 11 2012 and I turn 54 on October 4 this year 2011. I don't think she will live to celebrate another birthday though. Mum has not enjoyed a great quality of life the last few years. She has battled breast cancer, and two strokes over the last 25 years or so. Neither of those things will kill her though. A few months ago we decided that we should perhaps do something about a few skin cancers that had grown on her face. Two of them, one on her nose and one on her forehead, were removed in the plastic surgeon's surgery just using a local anaesthetic. It was quite painful at the time for Mum and the surgeon joked that she cleared their waiting room with her screams as he injected the local anaesthetic. She recovered quite quickly and her face healed quite well. But there was one skin cancer just under her right eye. Injecting a local anaesthetic there would have been ...

After 5 weeks now of living with the Ross River virus, I definitely think we should ban mosquitoes from living anywhere near human beings. Sounds pretty stupid I know, and impossible to enforce. Maybe we could just put a tax on them, or make them live in detention centres? Yes, while I have been home so much I have definitely been reading and listening and watching too much politics! But today I actually got some things done. I am still sore in the mornings and maybe not as energetic as I usually am, but I was able to do some work on one of the beehives and then, after 4 weeks of not surfing, I drove down to 13th beach and found a nice little peak to myself and had a great time. I rode one of my new 6'10" Fish and I was very impressed with how well it went. I really had a ball. Every wave, except my first, I was able to to a proper cutback back in to the white water and pull it back around and get back on the the face of the wave. Admittedly they were quite small and slow wa...

Last night we sat down as a family and watched the Ron Howard movie of Apollo 13. Apart from a bit of bad language, it was a very inspiring movie. Just in case you are in the dark about Apollo13, this was the mission to the moon that had to be aborted as there was an explosion on the ship on the way to the moon. They then had to go right around the moon and use the moons gravitational field as a bit of slingshot to get back to Earth. Maybe about half way back they started to notice the CO2 levels getting dangerously high. This was where the ground crew had to devise a way to fix the CO2 filters so that they guys on the ship could fix it and get back to Earth alive. As you no doubt know, too much CO2 can kill a human. Just as well Julia Gillard was not in charge of that mission. We all know her answer to too much CO2 don't we? PUT A TAX ON IT! That will get the levels down! What a stupid idea!