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The Art of the Brick

While in Sydney I went along to Nathan Sawaya's Lego exhibition "The Art of the Brick" at the Town Hall. It was pretty crowded with kids but was otherwise awesome, and unlike the money-hungry Warner Bros you were allowed to take photos at this exhibition. Which made it all kinds of wonderful.

"Blue Guy Sitting"

"Mask"

"Mask". This kind of full face mask is called a Bauta.

"Untitled"

"Courtney Yellow"

"Parthenon"

"The Artist's View"

"Untitled"

"Swimmer"

"Peaces"

"Yellow"

"Hands". The sculptor's worst nightmare: living without the use of his hands.

"Skulls"

"Rain"

"Apples"

"T-Rex". This piece took Nathan 80,000 Lego bricks and an entire summer to create.

"Sing"

"Untitled"

"Globe"

"Thinker"

Dropping the ball

Four days into the new year and I've already missed a day blogging. Mainly because even though I've been on holidays, I've been doing jigsaws and cleaning desks and going camping and sightseeing and shopping and watching movies.. so sitting on my computer in the heat hasn't been all that appealing (especially with a few thousand photos to sort through!)

More posts to come soon ... hopefully ;)

2011 Year in Review

So the year began with a small pool party at our house, with beer, pizza, games and good friends.

We didn't travel much this year. Well, we did a bit, but no big international holidays. We did a long weekend trip to Queensland in July to visit Chay and David which is always nice. The only other flying I did was for some training for work in Melbourne. We went to Dave's coast house in February, April, June and November. Again, always great weekends away.

Did several trips to Sydney throughout the year:

In August for my birthday to see a John Williams concert and visit friends and family
In September to play tour guide to Dave2 and be a tourist in my home town
In December to repeat the tourist trip with Kore

And a few smaller trips - to Yarrangobilly Caves, Parkes for The Dish 50th Anniversary open day, and Jindabyne to see the dam spilling.

At work I actually had a good beginning of the year. We got some new staff and for a few months I had time to step back from project work and get some operational stuff done. But then Phil went away for three months and it got super busy again - doh! Had a bowling night in June where I *didn't* come last! Team Blank went to three trivia nights: we came third in April, second in August and first in November! Of course that means we need to plan the next one! Planning to have that in March next year. Had a Hollywood-themed ball in October that I was sick for and was pretty miserable the whole night.

Speaking of sickness, it was one of the worst years I've ever had. Had a cold in February, with an ear infection and conjunctivitis as well. Got pretty severe gastro from Violet in March. Another cold in May and another in August. And then two months of various colds/flus/ear/eye infections from September to November. Finally healthy at the moment, but it hasn't been a great year :(

Didn't see as much of Nat and Andrew this year. The default activity for Saturday nights was watching Buffy and Angel with DaveC, so it took energy to do anything different, hence it didn't happen very often. We did have a couple of Singstar/video/games nights though.

Not a lot has changed on the fish front. We (I) made a rule some time back that we wouldn't buy any new fish until after Stu's Japan trip next year. So numbers have been slowly dwindling there. We had another heat wave that required regular dumpings of ice to keep tank temperatures down.

Although we had a couple of record lows in winter, the days were generally warmer, and the pool only froze over a couple of times.

The only new Lego this year was a few Harry Potter sets. Just trying to remember if the Toy Story 3 Lego came out this year or last year. It certainly didn't all get put away until just the other week! We went to the Lego Brick Expo in Woden which was pretty awesome. Also saw Nathan Sawaya's "Art of the Brick" exhibition in Sydney this week. And an unexpected bonus of lots of Lego displays at the Aquarium yesterday.

Only real toys this year were a new random camera, and a little Eee PC for use when travelling (and in fact I'm using it now!). I had a play with a macro lens and an L series lens. Still using my original lens though. On my phone I played with HDR and Instagram apps, as well as doing my first time lapse videos of Lego building, jigsaw building and clouds.

I had a lot of fun with origami this year - making several "phizz" balls of various sizes. Also some smaller geometric shapes (technically not origami).

I did some big jigsaws this year (and a stack of little ones). I did my 3000-piece one that I've had for years but never made. And then the first quarter of an amazing 24000 piece jigsaw! Hoping to do the next quarter early in the new year.

After the big La NiÃ±a of last summer, got to see Bendora Dam overflowing in January, as well as the aftermath of the floods at Coppins Crossing. Watched the progress of Cotter Dam and went to an open day in April (didn't go to another open day in November because it looked like they weren't preselling time slots and that didn't work very well at the first open day I went to).

In culinary adventures this year, I tried my hand at quite a few new recipes (and a few old ones). These were mostly desserts - Anzac Biscuits, Violet Crumble cheesecake slice, Apple pie, Caramel slice, Melting moments, Chocolate dipped fruit, Christmas cookies, Gingerbread. That was a lot of fun and will continue next year. Also did quite a few slow-cooked dishes, and rediscovered the simplicity of roast vegetables. Another new favourite of ours this year was okonomiyaki, thanks to Lisa. I also tried crocodile for the first time (it was a bit tough) and had my first McFeast (pretty good). Our favourite restaurants are still Black Pepper, the Dumpling Inn and Bella Vista. Tried a few new places as well including Courgette for our anniversary, Rice, Alice's and Kingsley's.

Shows seen this year:

Weird Al Yankovic
Folk Festival
Much Ado About Nothing
Jesus Christ Superstar
John Williams at the Opera House
Za Kabuki
Floriade Nightfest

Movies seen this year (at the movies):

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2)

Books read this year:

Hook by Geary Gravel (and got a comment by the author!)
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Mallorean series by David Eddings
National Velvet by Enid Bagnold

Other Stuff:

Got lots of my photos onto the RiotACT
Saddened by the Queensland floods
Lots of scanning of old photos
Got a GPS and had some fun
The little brother came to stay a few times with various people in tow (or by himself)
Balloon fiesta including going up in one!
Skyfire
Walk around Government House
Saw Peter Russell-Clarke at the mall
Enjoyed the third season of Masterchef but decided not to watch the second kids series
Walked up Black Mountain again in May and went up the tower this time
Watched Amazing Race Australia
Did the Mount Majura to Mount Ainslie walk
Missed two lunar eclipses (4am the first time, clouds the second time)
Met Fiona again (x2), and Lisa and Chris
Radio silence in July when our internet went out for two weeks
Skiing in July
Trivia night for Stu's work
Geotagged UK photos, but didn't get them all online
Walked up Mount Taylor
Stu's sister bought a new house in Canberra which makes visiting somewhat easier
Hanami party in September, would have been better a week later
Two games nights at Mishi's (only played games on one of the nights)
Blog got screwed over (again) by my hosting company
Saw the Queen
Saw Air Force One come to land at Canberra
Got some cool photos of lightning

As usual I don't really make new years resolutions. I think if anything I'd still like to try and spend less time on the computer - eg two hour chunks in the evenings.

We're having a quiet party in our hotel room tonight. Just a little champagne and nibblies in our room. The thought is to watch the 9pm fireworks from the hotel pool, and maybe go out at 11pm to see the main fireworks from Lavender Bay....

Happy New Year!!

Sydney Day 5

Beer Line Walk

So after pondering over beer bottles and brewing equipment in Haymarket and the pink dots, I went online and found out the little pink dots all over Sydney were part of a street art project called "Beer Line - from Barley to the Bottle". It started in Haymarket with some real barley planted in planter boxes. Unfortunately the barley had been harvested when we were there and it was just grass left. This morning I went to the start of the line and found some more information. It was partly in memory of the Castlemaine Brewery, and went in two directions - right towards Redfern, and left towards Circular Quay. I had intentions of walking the entire line, however I only managed to get as far as Wynyard before I had to get back for Art of the Brick, and then the rest of the week was too busy to finish it.

Beer bottles

Barley planter boxes (harvested, just grass now)

Start of the Beer Line

Space invaders in Haymarket

Footsteps on George Street

Hopscotch outside the QVB

Near Wynyard there was a branch off to the left with basketball lines

Here's some of the other stuff I stopped to take photos of along the walk

The hear/see/speak no evil monkeys had santa hats on

Queen Victoria statue outside the QVB

Dog sculpture outside the QVB

Art of the Brick

This was all kinds of awesome, but I'll put that in a separate entry

Bondi Beach

It seems Sydney Buses forgot that hundreds of people want to go to the beach during the school holidays, and were running a regular weekday timetable (actually there was probably a few extra buses that day otherwise we *never* would have gotten there). So we queued for like half an hour, then had to squeeze onto a bus and stand the whole way. I didn't have my swimmers since I'd been at Art of the Brick and was expecting Stu and Kore to have gone a lot earlier. So I sat under a tree. And got very grumpy at someone who was completely unsympathetic to my not being able to take photos at Harry Potter. So sat there feeling pretty miserable. Blah. Had a snack later with Stu and Kore before heading back to the hotel to recover.

Queue for buses at Bondi Junction

Squeezed onto a bus

Super crowded Bondi Beach

Sydney Aquarium

Too many annoying people, but there was a whole collection of nautical-themed Lego setup which made it pretty awesome. Apparently the company that owns that Aquarium also owns Legoland, so they were doing a promotion. Worked for me :):)

Triton in Lego

Freshwater crayfish

Some sort of dragon

Either a Murray or a Trout Cod

Eastern Water Dragon

Minifig with penguin

Red Indianfish

Cowfish

Little Penguin

Common Sydney Octopus

Jellyfish

Mermaid in Lego

Dory the blue tang

Fish in the dugong tank

Dugong

Stingray

Cuttlefish

Shark

Turtle

Nautical-themed cupcakes

Shark in the final tank

Sawfish

Fish in the final tank

Kore in the final tank

Kore about to be stabbed by a sawfish

Kore found Nemo (well Marlin actually)

Clownfish

Super awesome Lego display at the end - the white whale made out of Duplo and the biggest Lego mosaic I've ever seen in the background. The baseboards had been spraypainted with the colour to be used, and plates attached on top. But the plates weren't glued down, so there were patches around the edges (and even in the middle) where people had pulled off the plates and stolen them :(

Dinner at Eat Love Pizza

Had a few super yummy pizzas and a couple of drinks and had a nice chat

Crazy pizza stands

Salumi and prosciutto - sopressa, prosciutto crudo, mixed mushrooms, roast garlic and fior de latte. This pizza was awesome!

Kangaroo - potato base with marinated kangaroo, roasted pumpkin, pine nuts, feta and chopped parsley. I also really liked this pizza, and it was Kore's first taste of kangaroo.

Marinara - tiger prawns, mussels, vongole, calamari, chili, mozzarella and parmesan cheese. I didn't actually have any of this one, not a bit fan of seafood pizzas. I'm told it was good though.

Pyrophone Juggernaut

As we left Eat Love Pizza we saw a bunch of people seated watching the Pyrophone Juggernaut. There were people there testing the flames etc for tomorrow night. Unfortunately no show, we would have had to come back the next night :(

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

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

Billions of bins

Tumbalong Park

Me up the rope tower

Me up the rope tower

The rope tower

View from the rope tower

For Dave2: the Hard Rock Cafe building

Darling Harbour

Brolgas dancing at Cockle Bay Wharf

Darling Harbour

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

Fluttery

Kore and a flutterby

Koala

Gak gak bird!

Didn't catch the name of this guy

Zebra finch

Cunningham's skinks

Kookaburra

Yellow-footed rock wallaby

Wombat

Bull ant

Cassowary

A tiny dragon (kid's hand next to it)

Central bearded dragon

Ridge-tailed monitor

Kangaroos

Face-plant kanga

Juvenile emu

Emerald dove

A few seconds later - the dove being chased out of the food by an emu!

Stu, Kore and emus

Salt water crocodile

Yvonne could tell me what these finches are...

Nom!

Salt water crocodile

Didn't catch the name of this monitor either

Kore and bat

Kore touching a stick insect

Koala

Fiona the curlew upstages the koala keeper talk

Capture!

Rainbow lorikeet

Frilled-neck lizard

Kore and a kangaroo

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.

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

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!

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!

Crystal pavilion thing in the QVB
Crystal Santa room

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 under construction

In the "4D" show

Harbour from the tower
Sydney Harbour

Don't know what this kid was looking at..

Kore up the tower

Darling Harbour

Pacific Jewel

Highest post box. Except you can't actually buy stamps up the tower. Pointless!

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

Kore in Hyde Park

Archibald Fountain

St Mary's Cathedral

A bit of a wander down Macquarie Street.

Hyde Park Barracks

Stu picks hogwart's nose

Parliament House

State Library

Ibis

I told Kore they look better in flight

Conservatorium of Music

And down to Circular Quay, to go see the Opera House.

Obligatory Harbour Bridge photo

Kore discovers the Opera House is tiled

And back to Circular Quay and the Manly Ferry!

Circular Quay station with barricades up to stop people watching the fireworks there

Circular Quay

This was Kore's first ever ferry

Manly Wharf

Wandered up The Corso to the beach.

Smiley face in sweat

Bubbles!

There are several taps along the Corso for filling up water bottles. Best idea ever!

The Corso

Manly men in Manly

Manly beach

Kore dipped her feet in :)

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!).

Then wandered back to the ferry, which we timed nicely for some lovely sunset pictures over the harbour.

They haven't finished the barricades on this side yet

Circular Quay station with barricades for the fireworks

Kore's second train

And finally back to the hotel.

Had to point out that the moon is upside down here

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.

Sydney Day 1

Was aiming to be out the door by 9:30 but it was actually closer to 10am. Went through maccas drive through for brunch and then hit the Federal Highway.

The clouds over Lake George (and Mt Majura) were pretty spectacular.

Traffic was fairly heavy heading out of Sydney, with some fairly long queues on the M5 before and after Campbelltown.

Alfords Point Bridge

Arrived at my parents' place a bit after 1pm. Had nibbles followed by roast pork and lamb. Nom nom nom!!

After present opening we just chatted and watched slides of our USA 2004 trip and I processed the day's photos and we watched Kore's plane take off from LAX with Plane Finder.

Feeding the budgies ;)

I got a super cool Lego camera -

Pictures aren't super awesome, but it's a fun toy :)

We christened mum and dad's new electric frypan with some zucchini fritters (I had brought up a zucchini that needed eating).

And then before we knew it it was bed time...

Almost there..

Started freaking out last night about how much was left to do before Christmas, including just about all our Christmas shopping and a tonne of stuff to do at work.

Had a relatively successful day today, and most of our Christmas shopping is done.

Went to the Dumpling Inn for dinner - had the mixed chow-mein and shredded beef peking style.

But while taking those photos I've discovered that something is seriously wrong with Random Camera :(:( The other day (can't remember when, maybe when I was trying to take photos of the bugs on the cherry tree), random camera wouldn't turn on. Just dead. So I swapped out the battery and all was good. Charged it up and forgot about it. Then tonight I tried to turn it on, and dead again. Swapped the battery to get it to work. So something is draining the battery completely even while the camera is off. Most distressing and means I might have to go through the whole hassle of trying to get it repaired :(:(:(

Still partying

Yesterday we had our section Christmas party by the lake. Rain that was forecast during the week never eventuated, so it was a perfectly pleasant afternoon. Lyn and I spent our budget of $370, and I thought there was going to be a *tonne* of leftovers, but in the end it wasn't so bad.

Of course I took lots of photos of the local birds.

Today I went and helped setup the "family" Christmas party.

Got to have a quick go on the jumping castle before they'd finished inflating it.

After we'd finished setting up I went for a wander around, and had a go on the dodgem cars, since I missed out last time because the queue was too long.

They'd double booked the hall which was a bit unfortunate, but not a big disaster. Got to see the bride arrive (to a full brass band playing "All you need is love").

One year I'll go on the horse and cart..

I think my favourite thing was the "Patting Paddock", so many cute animals :)

Just got back from unloading the truck. Phewf. (Although not nearly a long a day as the others!)

Busy Sunday

Had quite a productive day today, including having the house to myself for the afternoon while the sweetie went to see Wagner.

Did a bit of planning for the next month, burnt backup DVDs of photos, cleaned my desk (somewhat), vacuumed half the house, vacuumed the pool, cooked a bunch of veggies for dinner, and a few other bits and pieces as well.

I still have lobster legs today :(:(