/**<js>*//**<js>*/{"id":2031,"date":"2026-02-12T21:35:57","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T21:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/all-about-me\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T21:35:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T21:35:57","slug":"all-about-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/all-about-me\/","title":{"rendered":"All about me"},"content":{"rendered":"[slideshow_deploy id=&#8217;787&#8242;]\nAs I write this, I am looking down the barrel of a birthday with a zero at the end of it. \u00c2\u00a0I should be happy it has only one zero &#8230; I should consider myself lucky that I&#8217;m\u00c2\u00a0having another birthday at all.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I thought it was time to bring my website up to date. After all, since I last posted anything significant on here, I have had two more books published and acquired a degree.<\/p>\n<p>I have fallen in love with Vietnam and I am planning to lead a couple of tours there &#8211; one will be tightly related to Tunnel Rats and A Sappers War (my books with Sandy MacGregor) and the other will be much more about Vietnam as it is now. \u00c2\u00a0You can read about them <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jimmythomson.com\/2013\/12\/03\/vietnam-then-and-now\/\">HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">Somewhere along the line, I have become an &#8216;expert&#8217; on apartment living &#8211; if the definition of expert is that I know where to find out the stuff that other people don&#8217;t know. \u00c2\u00a0The Sydney Morning Herald Flat Chat column is now has a Melbourne edition (the laws are very different so the columns usually are too) and I have started getting invitations to speak at conferences, which is cool as it scratches the itch that might otherwise have me foolishly try to do an open mike night at a stand-up club.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll find the new, enhanced website here\u00c2\u00a0<strong style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flat-chat.com.au\/\">http:\/\/www.flat-chat.com.au<\/a>.<\/strong><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\"> That&#8217;s\u00c2\u00a0 the place to be if you want to find the most recent examples of my trouble-making and attempts at problem solving in the area of strata living. After a blistering first year when I was getting about 1000 \u00c2\u00a0readers a day, it has settled down to a sensible 5-600, although it peaked one day when I had a story in the Herald&#8217;s online pages read by 123,000 people and at one point 518 people\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">were all,\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">at the same time,\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">reading the follow-up on my little website. What was the story? Whether ot not it was illegal to photograph someone&#8217;s illegally parked car. \u00c2\u00a0Don&#8217;t ask!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Oh, and I finally acquired a university degree &#8211; an MA in writing from the Open University and Swinbourne in Melbourne. \u00c2\u00a0So I can now legitimately lecture about writing, as I occasionally do, to students who are less well qualified than I am. And, as part of my final submission, I wrote the first 20,000 words of a crime novel that I desperately want to finish but which has lain untouched ever since.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">Time moves on so quickly. The kittens (below) who appeared the last time I revamped the website are now cats &#8211; one of them a ginger monster. And I have discovered a new desire &#8211; the desire to have done something (rather than wanting to actually do it). I&#8217;m calling it my Empty Bucket list. \u00c2\u00a0I would like to have run the City to Surf, I would like to have parachuted from an aeroplane and run for parliament. \u00c2\u00a0I have no desire to do any of these things in the future, I just think it would be cool if I had in the past.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">And on that note, I wish I had started fixing up this website two years ago when those kittens were just fluffy little balls of fur.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_194\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jimmythomson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/kitten-crop.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-194\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-194\" src=\"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/kitten-crop.jpg\" alt=\"Mac and Pepper at about 8 weeks\" width=\"300\" height=\"293\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-194\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mac and Pepper at about 8 weeks<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00c2\u00a0Jimmy Thomson, December 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[slideshow_deploy id=&#8217;787&#8242;] As I write this, I am looking down the barrel of a birthday with a zero at the end of it. \u00c2\u00a0I should be happy it has only&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2032,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031\/revisions\/2032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.hux9.org\/jimmythomson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}