My New Café

August 7, 2011
by Rodney Olsen
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I’m starting a new venture tomorrow. I’m creating my own café.

I’ve been on annual leave from my job at 98.5 Sonshine FM for a couple of weeks but tomorrow I’ll return with a re-branded morning program. What used to simply be called ‘mornings’ will become the Morning Café. It’ll be a mixture of good friends and great conversation, just what your favourite café should be. The strangest part of the whole café experience in this case is that you’ll have to provide your own coffee or beverage of choice. I’m sure to be sipping on a long black throughout the morning.

From nine to midday, Monday to Friday, it’ll be a place to talk food, footy, leadership, relationships, spirituality, fitness and health, technology and a whole lot more including national and international guests.

Many of my regular guests will remain as part of the Morning Café but there’ll also be a range of new segments which really excite me. I’ll reveal more as the days and weeks go on but it will certainly be a much busier program with plenty of ways for listeners to get involved.

If you’re in the Perth area you can listen in by tuning to 98.5 Sonshine FM. If you’re anywhere else in the world you can hear the Morning Café streaming live online. You can check what day and time you need to listen by going to timeanddate.com and searching for Perth, Western Australia. If that means that it’s in the middle of the night for you, you’ll still be able to listen to many of the Morning Café segments by visiting the Audio on Demand page at 98.5 Sonshine FM’s website.

What kind of radio programs do you enjoy? Who would you like to hear me interview? I’d really enjoy reading your comments.



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Does Mathematics Multiply Your Stress Levels?

June 20, 2011
by Rodney Olsen
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It’s well known that children do better with their education when their parents are supportive of their school and teachers. That’s why we do our best to help with homework. We help our kids with spelling, reading and lots of other homework but being asked to help with mathematics has many parents running from the room screaming or suddenly finding something else very important to do elsewhere.

“They didn’t do it that way in my day.”

We might be able to come up with the same answers as our kids but trying to follow the techniques they use seems almost impossible. On top of that, our children are likely to be using calculators or computers where all we had was a pencil, paper and a somewhat confused brain. So how do we help our children when we have no idea what they’re meant to be doing?

Dr Paul Swan began his career as a primary school teacher, then taught secondary mathematics and eventually ended up teaching at Edith Cowan University. He is the author and co-author of many books including the best selling Teaching Primary Mathematics. I was very pleased to have him as my guest this morning on 98.5 Sonshine FM.

We talked about why there seems to be so much difference in the way we learn about mathematics to the way we learn about other course areas. We also discussed simple ideas to help parents incorporate maths learning into everyday life. A major emphasis for Paul is making sure that our already stressed lives aren’t further complicated by mathematics. His approach is simple, down to earth and effective. You can listen to our discussion by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.

The WA Primary Principal’s Association is presenting Dr Paul Swan speaking about Supporting Your Children in Learning Mathematics this Wednesday night at the Burswood entertainment Complex. It’s a paid event with all profits supporting the Smart Future Foundation, a fully registered charitable entity that was established to give all children a fair go.

[audio:http://mpegmedia.sonshinefm.ws/feeds/MOR200611_1034.mp3]

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Where’s Nanna?

May 27, 2011
by Rodney Olsen
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The Brow Horn Orchestra is described as an eight piece Multi-Award Winning afro-electro, hip-hop, dub, ska and pop juggernaut. The problem is, they’ve lost nanna.

They recently performed at a music festival in Mandurah, just south of Perth, and while they were on stage a ‘mature aged fan’ was videoed dancing. Now they want to find out who she is so that they can include her in their next music video. They’ve nicknamed her the dancing nanna.

It’s understood that she’s probably in her 80s and may have been in Western Australia on holiday from Tasmania. The band would be happy to fly her back to Perth so that she can be in the video clip but they have to track her down first.



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Colin Buchanan heading to Perth

March 17, 2011
by Rodney Olsen
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This morning on my radio programme I spoke to a guy who was born in Dublin then moved to Melbourne at the age of six and then Sydney, before going bush as a young man.

In the years since, Colin Buchanan has won nine Golden Guitar awards, and has written songs with Lee Kernaghan, Adam Brand, Adam Harvey, Troy Cassar-Daley and many others.

He’s one of Australia’s most treasured singer-songwriters. His Christmas album, recorded with Greg Champion, has become an Australian classic, in particular his Aussie Jingle Bells, which is regularly heard at end-of-year school concerts and Carols by Candlelights.

All that, plus appearances as a regular on ABC TV’s Playschool and various other television and radio programmes.

Colin Buchanan is a 9-times Golden Guitar winner, an APRA and ARIA award winner with career album and DVD sales that stand in excess of 240,000 units. A regular on national TV and radio for over 15 years, a leading children’s entertainer, award-winning singer/songwriter and highly sought after co-writer, #1 selling Christian artist, genial host… Colin Buchanan is a hard man to pin down!

If you listened to any one of his five authentically insightful Australian country albums you’d likely deem him an acoustic singer songwriter par excellence, with his sharp eye, keen wit and rare talent for capturing the people, stories and scenery of the bush in song. The Sydney Morning Herald has declared him “…simply the best singer/songwriter to emerge in the Australian CM scene in the last decade.” Besides his own substantial body of self-recorded work, Colin has contributed to a swag of hits in the collective repertoires of Australia’s most successful CM stars, including Lee Kernaghan, Troy Cassar-Daley, Melinda Schneider, Adam Brand and Beccy Cole.

He’ll be in Perth for a series of concerts early next month so I took the opportunity to catch up with Colin Buchanan during my programme today.

You can click the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post to hear what Colin had to say.

[audio:http://mpegmedia.sonshinefm.ws/feeds/MOR170311_1111.mp3]

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Two Wheels One Mission

March 17, 2011
by Rodney Olsen
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Cosmos HealthCare is a Christian health and development organisation that values people and their right to be treated with dignity and equality regardless of their social status, race, religion or politics. Their aim is to provide quality, compassionate health services for underprivileged people across the world.

They are currently working to set up a mobile health service in rural Zimbabwe. To help raise funding for the project they’re organising a motor bike ride from Perth to York on the 10th of April. Those participating will be in the running to win a trip for two to the Australian MotoGP on Phillip Island, including flights, accommodation and VIP tickets. The event is titled Two Wheels One Mission. If you’re not a motor bike rider you can still purchase raffle tickets to be in the draw for the MotoGP prize and other prizes.
This morning during my radio programme I spoke to the Executive Director of Cosmos HealthCare, Jason James. You can hear about the vital work they’re doing by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.

[audio:http://mpegmedia.sonshinefm.ws/feeds/MOR170311_1042.mp3]

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