Results matching “Life”

* You believe that stubbies can be either drunk or worn. 

* You think it's normal to have a leader called Julia. 

* You've made a bong out of your garden hose rather than use it for something illegal such as watering the garden. 

* You understand that the phrase 'a group of women wearing black thongs' refers to footwear and may be less alluring than it sounds. 

* You pronounce Melbourne as 'Mel-bin'. 

* You believe the 'l' in the word 'Australia' is optional. 

* You can translate: 'Dazza and Shazza played Acca Dacca on the way to Maccas.' 

* You believe it makes perfect sense for a nation to decorate its highways with large fibreglass bananas, prawns and sheep. 

* You call your best friend 'a total bastard' but someone you really, truly despise is just 'a bit of a bastard'. 

* You think 'Woolloomooloo' is a perfectly reasonable name for a place. 

* You're secretly proud of our killer wildlife. 

* You believe it makes sense for a country to have a $1 coin that's twice as big as its $2 coin. 

* You understand that 'Wagga Wagga' can be abbreviated to 'Wagga' but 'Woy Woy' can't be called 'Woy'. 

* You believe that cooked-down axle grease makes a good breakfast spread. You've also squeezed it through Vita Wheats to make little Vegemite worms. 

* You believe all famous Kiwis are actually Australian, until they stuff up, at which point they again become Kiwis. 

* Beetroot with your Hamburger... Of course. 

* You know that certain words must, by law, be shouted out during any rendition of the Angels' song 'Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again' 
And "Living next door to Alice". 

* You believe that the confectionery known as the Wagon Wheel has become smaller with every passing year. 

* You wear ugg boots outside the house. 

* You believe that every important discovery in the world was made by an Australian but then sold off for a pittance. 

* You believe that the more you shorten someone's name the more you like them. 

* Whatever your linguistic skills, you find yourself able to order takeaway fluently in every Asian language. 

* You understand that 'excuse me' can sound rude,
While 'scuse me' is always polite. 

* You know what it's like to swallow a fly, on occasion via your nose. 

* You know it's not summer until the steering wheel is too hot to handle and a seat belt buckle becomes a pretty good branding iron. 

* Your biggest family argument over the summer concerned the rules for beach cricket. 

* You shake your head in horror when companies try to market what they call 'Anzac cookies'. 

* You still think of Kylie as 'that girl off Neighbours'. 

* When working on a bar, you understand male customers will feel the need to offer an excuse whenever they order low-alcohol beer. 

* You know how to abbreviate every word, all of which usually end in -o: arvo, combo, garbo, kero, lezzo, metho, milko, muso, rego, servo, smoko, speedo, righto, goodo etc. 

* You know that there is a universal place called "woop woop" located in the middle of nowhere...no matter where you actually are. 

* You know that none of us actually drink Fosters beer, because it tastes like piss. But we let the world think we do. Because we can. 

* You have some time in your life slept with Aeroguard on in the summer. Maybe even as perfume. 

* You've only ever used the words - tops, ripper, sick, mad, rad, sweet 
- to mean good. And then you place 'bloody' in front of it when you really mean it. 

* You know that the barbecue is a political arena; the person holding the tongs is always the boss and usually a man. And the women make the Salad. 

* You say 'no worries' quite often, whether you realise it or not. 

* You understand what no wucking furries means. 

* You've drank your tea/coffee/milo through a Tim Tam. 

* You own a Bond's chesty. In several different colours. 

* You know that some people pronounce Australia like "Straya" and that's ok. 

* And you will immediately forward this list to other Australians, here and overseas, realising that only they will understand.


Happy invasion day ..

Tintin

Tintin
As discussed yesterday, I got us tickets to see Tintin tonight!

So yeah, it was 3D.  I don't think 3D really added anything to it.  Should have just got and seen it in 2D.  Oh well.

So definitely a lot of fun.  A bit "yeah right" in places, but that's to be expected.  One thing I did like was the super long shots during the action scenes.  Which of course they can do when the whole thing is animated.  A real-life action movie would have them chopping camera angles every half a second.  The long shots made it fun to watch.

Enjoyed the references to the comic strips.  Which I haven't seen in probably twenty five years.  I don't think I've read any of the books since I was in primary school!!

Fun stuff.  Worth seeing.  In 2D.  :)

River Island

So we had new year's night in Canberra, then headed out again on the second to stay with D&Y at River Island.

Had a swim in the spa first up which was lovely and cool.

Then down to Tiny's Crossing for a swim in the Wollondilly River.  Lovely!

Wollondilly swim
David cooked up a storm for dinner.
BBQ
As always, the nicest thing about the place is all the wildlife.  Didn't get to see the wombat, but Kore saw it the day before - and even patted it!

Water dragon

(sorry this was getting dark and random camera can't zoom that much)
Wallaby
Willy Wagtail
Kangaroos
Kangaroos
Kangaroo
Kangaroo
Kangaroo
Bower Bird
Goanna
Goanna

Resolutions

After we dropped Kore off in Mittagong yesterday, the sweetie and I had a good long chat on the drive back to Canberra.  We chatted about life and stuff, but also came up with some resolutions.  Of course most of these are things like exercise more and eat better, but a few personal ones as well.

Feeling positive about 2012 .. (except maybe about going back to work ;) )

Sydney Day 4

Had a crap night sleep last night.  Don't know how much longer I can keep this up.  Woke up at 5:30am this morning.  Got up at 7:00 and did all yesterday's photos for the blog.  I may as well have gotten up at 5:30 :/

So we went to Maccas again, and the little brother met us again.

Pink dots are all around Sydney.  Possibly part of Street Works
Pink dot

Had a bit of a wander through Darling Harbour, including climbing a rope pyramid.

Billions of bins
Bins
Tumbalong Park
Tumbalong Park
Me up the rope tower
Me climbing a tower
Me up the rope tower
Me climbing a tower
The rope tower
Up the tower
View from the rope tower
View from the tower
For Dave2: the Hard Rock Cafe building
Hard Rock Cafe
Darling Harbour
Darling Harbour
Brolgas dancing at Cockle Bay Wharf
Brolgas
Darling Harbour
Darling Harbour

Then to Wildlife World.  Spent a couple of hours there with Kore squeeing over kangaroos and koalas.

Fluttery
Flutterby
Kore and a flutterby
Kore and a butterfly
Koala
Koala
Gak gak bird!
Gak gak bird
Didn't catch the name of this guy
Some sort of dragon I think
Zebra finch
Zebra finch
Cunningham's skinks
Cunninghams Skinks
Kookaburra
Kookaburra
Yellow-footed rock wallaby
Yellow-footed rock wallaby
Wombat
Wombat
Bull ant
Bull ant
Cassowary
Cassowary
A tiny dragon (kid's hand next to it)
Dragon
Central bearded dragon
Central bearded Dragon
Ridge-tailed monitor
Ridge-tailed monitor
Kangaroos
Kangaroos
Face-plant kanga
Faceplant kanga
Juvenile emu
Juvenile emu
Emerald dove
Emerald dove
A few seconds later - the dove being chased out of the food by an emu!
Emu chasing dove
Stu, Kore and emus
Stu, Kore and emus
Salt water crocodile
Salt water crocodile
Yvonne could tell me what these finches are...
Finches

Nom!
Nom
Salt water crocodile
Salt water crocodile
Didn't catch the name of this monitor either
Monitor
Kore and bat
Kore and a bat
Kore touching a stick insect
Kore patting a stick insect
Koala
Koala
Fiona the curlew upstages the koala keeper talk
Fiona the curlew
Capture!
Capture!
Rainbow lorikeet
Rainbow lorikeet
Frilled-neck lizard
Frilled-neck lizard
Kore and a kangaroo
Kore and a kangaroo
Salt water crocodile
Salt water crocodile

Was later leaving there than we hoped and had to meet David and Yvonne at a Korean place.  Our original instructions were "on Pitt St, south of Town Hall near Capitol Square, on the right".  As we were walking I asked what the name of the place was.  NaruOne.  OK, so into Google Maps.  No probs.  Except Google Maps was wrong by a whole block.  Got the address (375 Pitt St, Lower Ground) and then had to go back a block (after Stu led us downstairs under 395 Pitt St).  So anyway.  Fifteen minutes late, hot and stressed.  *sigh*

Had bibambap at Yvonne's recommendation.  

Bibimbap bits
Bibimbap

So left there at 2:00 and headed down to the Powerhouse museum for a special exhibition, which might have been awesome, had it not been for stoopid money-hungry corporations.  Made me very upset.

So came back to the hotel and crashed, because frankly both Stu and I were completely done with the afternoon.

Although Kore and I did pop out for takeaway - we got some Turkish because she'd never had pide or dolmatas or falafel before.  

Watched a heartbreaking documentary on the township of Iitate in Japan that was affected by the Fukushima reactor disaster.  

Sydney Day 3

Didn't sleep very well *again* last night :(:(  Blah.
Headed out a bit after nine and met the little brother at the local McCafe.  Had brekky (bacon and egg mcmuffin and a hash brown.. yumm) then wandered through the Devonshire Street tunnel to the station to buy our tickets.  We decided to get a MyMulti (Zone 1).  
Art in the Devonshire Street Tunnel
Devonshire St tunnel
Devonshire St tunnel
Headed to Town Hall.  I went down and got myself a ticket to the Art of the Brick show on Friday morning! 
Kore's first ever train!
Tangara

Deck chairs outside Town Hall
Deck chairs at Town Hall


Then we had a wander through the QVB.  Stopped in to look at HobbyCo.  Nearly didn't get Stu and Kore away from the anime section ;)

Old freight trains
Model train in the QVB
Thomas!
Thomas
Crystal pavilion thing in the QVB
Crystal Santa room
Crystal Santa room
Christmas Tree in the QVB
Christmas tree in the QVB
Left there and went and got our tickets for the Tower/Wildlife World/Aquarium from NRMA (10% discount - same as online).  Then to Sydney Tower!  I didn't worry about panoramas this time since I did that last time.  Just zoomed in on all sorts of things, and did the tour guide thing for Kore.  And far out it was crowded!  Queued to go up, queued to go down.  And then got stuck in the lift.  Well not really, it just didn't start.  Ended up just hitting the door open button to get out.
Sydney Tower from King Street
Sydney Tower from King St
Sydney Tower under construction
Sydney Tower under construction

In the "4D" show
In the "4D" show
Harbour from the tower
Sydney Harbour
Don't know what this kid was looking at..
Not sure what this kid was looking at..
Kore up the tower
Kore and Kurama
Darling Harbour
Darling Harbour
Pacific Jewel
Pacific Jewel
Highest post box.  Except you can't actually buy stamps up the tower.  Pointless!
Post box
By this time it was lunch time, so we went to the Westfield foodcourt.  I had subway! heh. Poor sweetie.  Sydney is super crazy busy at the moment, and even at 2pm the food court was packed.  Basically the sweetie's idea of hell :( 
Then headed across to Hyde Park to see the Archibald Fountain and St Mary's cathedral (didn't bother going in - since "pics or it didn't happen" would mean it didn't happen heh).
Kore and Stu inspecting the wicker concrete on a building in Market Street
Concrete on Market St
Kore in Hyde Park
Kore in Hyde Park
Archibald Fountain
Archibald Fountain
St Mary's Cathedral
St Mary's Cathedral
A bit of a wander down Macquarie Street.
Hyde Park Barracks
Hyde Park Barracks
Stu picks hogwart's nose
Stu picks Hogwart's nose
Parliament House
Parliament House
State Library
State Library
Ibis
Ibis
I told Kore they look better in flight
Ibis in flight
Conservatorium of Music
Conservatorium of Music
And down to Circular Quay, to go see the Opera House.
Obligatory Harbour Bridge photo
Harbour Bridge
Opera House
Sea Gull
Kore at the Opera House
Kore discovers the Opera House is tiled
Kore discovers the tiles
Kore at the Opera House
And back to Circular Quay and the Manly Ferry!
Freshwater
Circular Quay station with barricades up to stop people watching the fireworks there
Circular Quay station
Circular Quay
Sydney from the ferry
Sydney from the ferry
Opera House
Harbour Bridge
Sydney
Sea plane
Lighthouse near the heads
This was Kore's first ever ferry
Kore on the ferry
Sailing boats on the harbour
Manly Wharf
Manly Wharf
Wandered up The Corso to the beach.  
Smiley face in sweat
Smiley face in sweat
Bubbles!
Oz Bubbles
Church
There are several taps along the Corso for filling up water bottles.  Best idea ever!
Water filling station
The Corso
The Corso
Manly men in Manly
Manly men
Manly beach
Manly beach
Kore dipped her feet in :)
Kore in the ocean
Then back to the Steyne hotel for a beer.  We originally had a table in the middle, but then noticed a window seat was free, so we all moved over there.  I tell you what, a nice cold beer, seat by the window with a lovely sea breeze and a view of the ocean was AWESOME!!  Really really nice.  Even the sweetie felt better after the stressful morning.  Decided to get "fish and chips" there because that's a traditional beachy thing to do (and Kore had never had it before, in fact she'd never even been to a pub before!).
Beer at the Steyne Hotel
Fish and chips
Then wandered back to the ferry, which we timed nicely for some lovely sunset pictures over the harbour.  
Pacific Jewel
Kore on her second ferry
Harbour sunset
Pacific Jewel leaving
Harbour sunset
Harbour sunset
Harbour sunset
Harbour sunset
Harbour sunset
Sydney
Opera House

Harbour Bridge
Circular Quay
They haven't finished the barricades on this side yet
Circular Quay station with barricades for the fireworks
Kore's second train
Train
And finally back to the hotel.  
Had to point out that the moon is upside down here
Moon
Bat!
Bat
Took over 1100 photos today .. whoops!!  Not sure how my experiment to deal with photos on a daily basis is going to work!  OK so an hour and a half later and I'm still not finished processing photos, let alone select some to blog, resize, upload and enter them into the blog.  Might work on that tomorrow morning if I get a decent nights' sleep and wake up early enough.

Sterile

I always thought our weeping cherry tree was sterile, because I'd never seen any cherries on it.

Turns out it does make cherries after all (just itty bitty ones, and very few of them).

Weeping cherries
Shown here at slightly bigger than life size next to a regular cherry and some blueberries.
Weeping cherries

In other news, I got sunburnt clearing out the gutters (including the scary back ones).  Didn't get to properly clean out the downpipe at the back, it was a bit dangerous.  Might have another crack at though with some longer tools. Didn't do the front left half either because I'd been in the sun too long (hence the sunburn :( )

Convinced I'm Dying

(TMI post, you've been warned)

So I'm convinced I'm dying.  Or at least have some sort of immunodeficiency.  I've been sick for basically two months straight.  I've never been this sick in my life.

To summarise:
* bad flu after Sydney in September that had me off work for most of the week
* ear infection, probably bacterial, took three weeks of antibiotics to get over
* gastro or food poisoning the night of our work ball (during the antibiotics run)
* weird eye infection just after I finished the antibiotics, don't know if viral or bacterial (both tests were negative)
* cold from one of the boys at the coast, done by the time I went to Melbourne
* bad cold or flu that started the Sunday night in Melbourne which made my training week pretty miserable
* persistent sore throat since about Saturday that I'm convinced is another bacterial infection (still coughing too)

Being stressed about being sick sabotages my means of getting better (ie, sleeping) and haven't felt up to doing any proper exercise in forever.

*sigh*

Flight Diary

A few weeks ago I had the idea that I should digitise the flight log book my parents kept for me as a kid (after the Air New Zealand flight we got home from New Zealand in 1975 which gave me the log book).  

Flight Log Book

I entered all of those flights into an excel spreadsheet, and then kept going, digging out all my old boarding passes, photos and blog entries to figure out all the flights I've been on in my life.

As it turns out I've been on eighty flights in my life.  A few of those trips were on the same plane, so not eighty aircraft.  

I was telling Steve about all this and he showed me a magical site called flightdiary where you can enter all the details of all the flights you've been on, and it will show you all those flights on a map, as well as all sorts of statistics about your flights.  So awesome!  (and a total shock that Steve would have done anything that obsessive himself! :) )

So I went back to the boarding passes to get my seat numbers, and then entered everything into flightdiary (where I could - I didn't always get the registration of the plane all the time, mainly around that dark period around 2000 which was after I stopped using the log book and before I started recording things more obsessively).

It wouldn't count a flight on my uncle's plane because it didn't recognise the airport, so it only has 79 flights.

Some current stats:
79 flights (59 domestic, 20 international)
212272 km (5.3x around earth)
293 h 33 min (12.2 days or 1.7 weeks)
26.5 tons CO2 (1.44 kg methane, 1.18 kg nitrous oxide)
Top airport Sydney (obviously), followed by Brisbane, Canberra, LAX and Narita
Top airline Qantas, followed by Virgin Blue, then Ansett, Jetstar and TAA
Top aircraft - 737s, 747s, 727s and probably Dash 8s (but they get split up between the different sub series)
Top routes - Sydney to Brisbane and Brisbane to Sydney.  Pretty obvious with all the trips I did to visit Stu and later Chay and David.  Sydney-Canberra has had few goes now too.
2010 was my busiest year with 13 flights and it seems I've never flown in February!
Another funny thing I noticed was that in the first 32 flights of my life, not one of them was the same source/destination!  Some return trips, but never the same start/finish.  The first route ever to get repeated was the 2004 flight from Sydney to LAX.

Flight Diary

Flight Diary
Check out my full profile and stats on FlightDiary.

Tomorrow I get to add another flight to the list :)


Had a pretty busy day doing lots of bits and pieces.

Productive evening doing washing, cleaning the pool, yummy lamb leftovers for dinner, "life" paperwork, photo sorting.

And discovered that there really was a system change made to the web host for this site - as evidenced in a changed format of the log files from that night back in September.  I replied back to the last mail, dunno if I'll get any response.

Here's a couple of miscellaneous photos.

A nice sunrise the other morning
Dramatic sunrise
Cadbury Screme Eggs, seen in Coles Belconnen
Cadbury Screme Eggs
A poppy in the front yard
Poppy
Dramatic lighting of trees next to Belconnen Way
Belconnen Way Trees