So I was going to start this post with some new kitchen creations, and then see if I had space remaining to give a few non-culinary updates. I’ve now decided to go the other way around.

So this story begins last night, with losing my phone. My beautiful shiny new Iphone 4. It fell out of my pocket during a large function I was working at; in the dark, in the park. I was in and around an enormous circus tent filled with people, back and forth from a kitchen tent filled with more people, mess, water, food waste, and furniture, and went to the toilet a couple of times too! Great!

Now if it had been a little prepaid budget phone with a few number etc etc maybe (just maybe) it wouldn’t have stung so hard! I have to admit that in a society filled with pressure to be more organised, more connected, more up to date, more in-tune and available 24/7 I for one had succumb to the demands placed on myself (by myself) to be all of these things and more. The sheer fact that I had all of my contacts, my diary, my schedule, my emails, my Evernote noteboks with my current recipes, my raw e-books, and more ad nauseam stored on my mobile telephone in that instant seemed slightly insane to me. I felt at least alarmingly exposed. At worst like I had just lost the connection I had to the world at my fingertips.

Now one could argue that it should all be backed up to my computer, and don’t worry it is. But regardless of whether I actually have the physical phone and am able to use it, the good people at Telstra are going to continue charging me a monthly service charge, as well as a handset supplement for the express use of said handset! Awesome! I especially love that Telstra refuse to insure mobile phones. So if anything is to happen, unless it is stolen from your house or vehicle and you are willing to go through the run around and pay whatever excess applies, Telstra is going to win this one every time. Bastards.

What this event did highlight for me however was the unity and compassion that everyone I worked with last night showed when my distraught little face rounded that kitchen tent to ask if anyone had picked up an Iphone. The chefs that had finished their cleaning asked for the number and proceeded to walk with me around in circles making call after call after call. The audio visual guys in the tents lent me their mini torch and graciously made announcements over the PA system to the remaining guests, all the staff in between tasks were scanning the floors, the cleaners checked all the toilets and around the trash bins, the events management team offered to have the phone sent to my home or work if it was found!

Each person who checked back with me offered their own story of the mess that can occur when our precious connection to social lifeblood goes awry! Now beyond the flood of tears that I could feel welling just millimetres behind the eyelids I did all I knew how. I stopped, I breathed and I got real with myself. Phone’s can be replaced, numbers, dates and emails are all backed up as is music. Sure I don’t want to pay for something I can’t afford again, but worse things have happened. The chefs were all telling me that it must still be around because it’s still ringing. If someone had nicked off with it they would have turned it off and taken out the SIM. The boys kept ringing. [I might mention that due to being at work, the phone was on silent! We were relying on perhaps noticing light in the dark that matched the ring times!! HAHAHA Optimism at it’s best!

I went recently to another Oneness Blessing course. This time run by Deb Hall. An amazing lady who has been doing lots of great work in the Cairns area with the Oneness Blessing, and who I’ve always found to speak ever so eloquently and simply and profoundly, always having an impact on me personally in some way. I called to mind her speaking of asking the Divine for what you want, whether that be God, Allah, Universe, Spirit, Mohammed, Jesus Christ, The Beatles, whatever, that part doesn’t matter so much. What does matter is that you are honest and clear about the reasons WHY you want something.

Say for example you want to win the lotto. If you somehow feel guilty about wanting this so therefore give your reasons for wanting to win as things like, “to help others, to feed the starving people, so I can give it away to others”, etc etc, but this is not really why you want it, well, it’s never going to happen. Nothing is ever going to change. If on the other hand you are honest and can say, I want to win the lotto so I can, “buy a Ferrari and travel the world and prove to my friends that I really am important or special or whatever”, then something has to change. Either you will win the lotto because you want it that badly and you’re honest about why, or other things will begin to shift (because you have been honest) in which winning the lotto doesn’t seem so necessary and important anymore!

So I took myself to the only private space I could find…. the toilet. I sat down, spilled a tear or two, and gave it all over. I want my phone, come on Universe please get me my phone back. Angels, find my phone. Please, find my phone. Why? Because  I can’t afford a new one (as much as I’m trying to shift into better abundance thinking!!), and honestly, I don’t want a new one, I want that one, the one with the pictures of Alex, the one with our entire message history from the first message we sent, the one that will connect me to him when I walk out this gate, the one that lets me talk to him when he gets a moment of reception out in the watery blue expanse he calls work… I want Alex, I want my Iphone.

OK. Breathe. Not quite what I was expecting… but hey, thank goodness it’s a lot less superficial than crying over a convenient piece of technology! Done. There’s my reasons, get me my phone.

I keep looking. The audio guy came out to tell me that he killed the music for a moment in case I wanted to call and listen. I would, except it’s on silent. The chefs keep calling anyway. They tell me that they’re leaving to go for a drink and I’m welcome to join them, but I’m not leaving til I’ve found my phone, and I’ve been told that the floodlights will be turned on in half an hour or so to pack up. Inside the tent a plastic jigsaw type flooring has been laid to prevent everyone from tripping over the grass and losing their chair legs/ heels/ selves etc. It has started to come apart in places from the trampling and the rolling of trolleys carrying all the large items out to be washed. In one section of ‘walkway’ near the back exit the flooring has come away completely and Lucinda bends down to try and fix it. Whilst on the floor she said she heard a funny noise. She was so confused she thought she was hearing things, the music comes back on, she still listens and hears it again. With no idea what she’s looking for she searches the ground around her. Nothing. She looks to her right and at the pot plant innocently sitting by the curtain.

I’m inside the kitchen tent checking deep puddles of food and water for any sign of my drowned comrade, I hear my name called and turn around to see the supervisor waving a black rectangle high in the air!!! I’m not joking!!! After an hour of searching my phone is found inside a pot plant. And only because the music was low enough at the exact moment that Lucinda tried to fix the floor; the noise she heard was the phone vibrating against the pot because the chefs who had since left had continued to call the phone hoping someone would pick up!!! HA! HA! HA! HA!!!!!

Go Universe! Go Angels! Go Lucinda, and Matt, and Andy, and the audio guy, GO my Iphone! Now I’m going home… to set up the Iphone GPS tracking system so that if my phone goes missing in the future my computer will tell me exactly where it is!!

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, about an hour later I received a text message from Alex. He had found an area of the ship that was holding weak mobile signal, he wanted to message me while he could! <blush> Thank you!

NM.