Three Weddings and a Park

I spent most of the day sitting in Hyde Park enjoying the sunshine and drizzle with equal pleasure. I was just grateful to have escaped the heat of Melbourne. Sadly cooler weather brings mosquitoes so I ventured into the city in search of some insect repellent and something to make the stinging go away. This just adds to the recent trend of buying practical yet contextually strange things on my outings. I bought a pair of rigging gloves on the recent beach trip.

Armed with the spray I managed to read half of Signal to Noise before the start of my shift. I ended up working on the Weddings at the Macquarie Street stage. I think they went well, but I only saw the third wedding as I spent much of the evening waiting for deliveries up the road. It was a beautiful if brief ceremony (each of the three weddings went for approximately 20 minutes) and the three couples looked happy despite the inclement weather. It was great to bump into people who I knew who were working on the festival too.

After work I caught up with Tamsin after a small delay (who'd have thought that there would be two polar cone vans in the same intersection?) and we roamed Hyde Park in search of a bar. Spiegeltent was closed for a private function so our plan had been somewhat foiled. We failed to find a bar in Hyde Park although we were sure that there was one nearby... after all it was opening night of the Festival! We trekked to Martin Place before deciding to head back to Tam's to drop off my bags and find a bar at nearby Oxford Street.

We ended up with G&Ts in hand noting that at the bar we'd stopped at people seemed to be segregated into all male or all female groups of varying sizes. There were also enough candles arranged on a shelf to inspire a funeral-esque atmosphere so we decided to move on. Not managing to find anywhere else that caught our fancy we headed back towards her apartment to make a final stop a the Irish pub which turned out to be closed. The universe seemed to be telling us it was time for bed.

This morning we got up, lazed about and then headed to a lovely little bookshop & cafe for breakfast and departed caffeinated, fast broken and armed with a book. Secondhand bookstores are a dangerous place. Throw in food and drinks and I may never leave!

I've finished reading one of the books I've brought up with me and have enjoyed an afternoon relaxing in the cool but wonderfully fine weather that seems to be gracing the city. It feels good to be somewhere different even if it still feels the same.

Midnight Cakes

Not only am I nocturnal, I'm beginning to make a habit of baking cakes at midnight. This is of course totally in line with Dad's nocturnal habits but I'm sure it's not good for us!

Tonight's cake was a simple pound cake made with a recipe that I've altered a bit and am still tweaking. Perhaps a little less egg but otherwise a delicious cake that will be perfect with my morning (ha!) coffee.

Speaking of coffee I don't think I've mentioned how in love I am with our new espresso machine, which in all honesty isn't that new any more as we've had it for almost a month... Purchased the day after the dishwasher caught fire which I also seem to have failed to mention. I guess that's what happens when I write while I should be asleep.

I have had a fairly productive day today despite only making it out of bed at 13:00. I've achieved 80% of what I wanted to do.

Tomorrow I'm aiming to:
- do at least one load of washing
- clean the bathroom
- head to the post office and post my international mail
- head to the supermarket to pick up some supplies for further baking adventures
- have a cup of coffee with a slice of tonight's cake
- read another chapter of The Pleasure of my Company and one of The Ghost's Child (apparently children's fiction and literature have captured my attention from the stack of sci-fi/fantasy that's sitting by my bed
- write a few more cards
- finish the entrelac scarf that I've been making out of Noro's Silk Garden yarn.

We'll see how I go... first I need to get out of bed before noon! Excellent practice for Tuesday when I have to be at work at 09:00. Wish me luck!

Bound for the bush

I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, I've just been trying to be sociable for the last few days!

One of the many people I met in Doha, Adam, is over in Oz on holiday and is likely to one of the very few visitors I get due to the incredible airfares that are required to get to Darwin from most Australian capital cities.

So it's been a week of trying different food options ranging from seafood platters at Lewinsky's (named after Ms Monica) and a delicious selection of Thai curries at Hanuman, it's been a truly delicious week.

Having promised myself I wasn't going to repeat Doha where I managed to not make it out to explore the desert (while virtually living in it), this weekend will see my first trip in a long time out to the bush.

Kakadu's only 250km from Darwin and while we won't see all of the park there are definite highlights that I've been given from my work mates. So I'm looking forward to sitting in a croc-free pool at the top of a waterfall to pass at least one of my afternoons.

Might even make it back in time to see all the fireworks on Territory day...

Must run, toast is ready and I have to leave for work otherwise I won't get to leave for the park!

PS. Hot showers are back!

The Little Things

Mum's looking better with each passing day and even though she had her biopsy today she was still pretty cheerful.

Dad and I were with her when her lunch arrived.



It was so good to hear her laughing again. Even if she was holding her stomach in slight pain to do so. You see, the spoon in the picture is actually a tea spoon. While she had ordered a small serve she wasn't quite expecting it to be that small.

I think she's looking forward to coming home to a home cooked meal!

Restless

It's been almost a week since I posted and it feels longer and shorter than that at the same time.

I keep meaning to post about things that have been happening. New projects (knitting related of course) and general news but I can barely sit still at the moment. Proverbial goldfish-esque attention span.

Definitely time to get some work. Just something temporary and casual to help fund my future travel plans (Europe again in November with any luck). Something to stop me from feeling like I'm going quietly insane.

At the moment I'm knitting Gene a pair of Space Invader Socks which is taking much longer than anticipated. I'm glad that I decided to start early because it took me about five hours to make it through the 10 rows of the cuff (usually only a 30-40 minute task in front of the TV for anyone who hasn't had my sock knitting inflicted on them). It's also allowing me to do two colour stranding in my knitting (new technique I'm learning) which involves me knitting with a strand of yarn in each hand. Continental (a.k.a. left-handed) and English knitting (normal technique). I'm loving it but when my brain is ready to explode I move onto a pair of lacy socks that I'm making for myself.

Still going strong on the cooking front. More so as our family move to a healthier diet. Anything involving mushrooms and baby spinach is a favourite at the moment. Less baking happening on my part but Dad made a delicious banana cake last night. His first if I'm not mistaken. A proud moment as he got to use our cake mixer and blender last night. Pictures to follow.

I'm so wrapped up in my thoughts at the moment that I'm sure it's not good for me. So far the most exciting thing thats not space-invader-sock-related is my drive to label and catalog things. I spent the better part of Tuesday labeling all 253 posts in this blog. I then spent much of the wee hours of Wednesday starting to catalog my book collection at LibraryThing.

Yeah rock on I say!

Breakfast Post

I've been meaning to post something again for the last few days but to be honest I haven't had much to say because I haven't really done much! If only they had a patch for blogging... or procrastination.

Anyhoo... since rehearsal last week I've been to two dance lessons, one blues and one swing, gotten a quarter of the way through the pair of socks that I started a while ago and had a job interview. (Incidentally, I'm still about four rows off finishing Gene's Norwegian scarf... *sigh* Figured I'll hold out until closer to Winter because it's too warm for him to wear now)

It would seem that we've caught the swing bug again. Last Tuesday I went to my first swing class in about eight months with Naomi which was an open class (combined levels) and it was a fabulous way to get back into it. So having been totally hooked after one class back we decided to try some blues dancing as there was going to be a class on Sunday.

Blues dancing was awesome. I think if I keep it up my following might even get better. My inner(?) control freak gets in the way of my dancing if I'm not careful but because I had no idea what was happening I was more likely to just do as I was led. Great music and it seems more free too.

Still last night's intro to lindy hop was really good. We'd done a bit of lindy hop and it's a bit like learning to ride a bicycle. The rhythm stays with you and the more we seem to learn of the basic steps the more we have to learn. I did find that the harder I thought about what my feet were doing (they get a bit sneaky) the harder it got. I think I needed to relax more.

After we got home and dined on a fine dinner of greasy chicken (so much for the healthy eating kick), Gene and I watched an episode of CSI with Mum, the first episode of season 1 Love My Way then the first episode of season 3 of Deadwood. I think we did well with the pacing of the actual shows but lost in our timing as it was fairly late when we stopped. Not a problem today when we don't have much planned except for swing again tonight.

Tomorrow however we need to be out in Tullamarine for work by 09:00. Oh yeah bring on that early morning rush hour traffic. It'll be good to be back at work though. Miss work. So I'm up "early" today. Woke up at 05:30 and lay in bed watching the sun creep over the Dandenongs until about 06:30. I do like watching the sun rise and set.

Breakfast calls (well my stomach does).

Back to Baking

Happy birthday everyone. It's the seventh day of Chinese New Year today, also known as everybody's birthday (birthday of humans). I must say it's one of my favourite days of the CNY celebrations as it's the day that we feast on yu sang which is a raw fish salad. The raw fish is eaten to bring sucess through the year Aside from my love of sashimi I love this dish because it's a lot of fun to to eat. Before the salad is eaten everyone gets their chopsticks and tosses the salad together. The aim of this is to toss the salad the highest as it's meant to be luckier the higher you manage to toss it. This can get a little messy but most of the salad usually ends up back in the bowl! You're also supposed to eat noodles for longevity.

It's been a good day today. I've made progress on the sock that I started from the funky sock yarn that Gene bought me in Norway.

Sadly I am out of form with my knitting so my hand started to ache after a mere 24 rows of sock knitting.

Having been inspired by the cookie baking that occurred in Stranger Than Fiction, which we watched with Matt on Thursday, I started baking again. Gosh it's good to have an oven again!

Homeward Bound

I'm on my way home at last. By the time I arrive in Melbourne on the 18th February I'll have been away for exactly 6 months.

Our travel arrangements of late have been rather interesting. We were hoping to be able to depart on the 18th February but were doubtful of getting seats. As a result we've been calling Emirates on a daily basis to see how we were doing. Today Gene called up and was advised that we'd all been kicked off the waiting list as it was too long and that the first day it reopened was the 20th Feb. They also mentioned that I should fly soon as the ticket that I was under the impression (due to the printed words at the top of my old ticket) was valid for a year from issue was only valid for six months according to their system. Not wanting to have to buy a new ticket to argue this later we took the one ticket back to Australia that they had. The only catch is I'd have to leave tomorrow.

So I'll be leaving Gene & Nick (again) and heading home first to pave the way for them. With any luck they may be able to get a flight on the 25th Feb but if not they're confirmed for the 28th February.

After recovering from the shock of having to leave tomorrow instead of in a few days or a week my first instinct was to pack everything that I wanted to do into my one day here.

First port of call after a fine breakfast of currypuffs was to take Nick down to Far East Plaza and Orchard Road to see the main shopping strip of Singapore.

We were briefly distracted at Takashimaya where we had a Korean lunch and I bought traditional snacks like mwah chee which is a rice flour dough dipped in crushed peanuts (taste better than it looks and sounds) and some Japanese sweet pancakes (again with peanuts).

Once at Far East Plaza we took him to our favourite ever bookshop, Sunny, where Gene and I proceeded to purchase new libraries.

Reading List for early 2007
- His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
- The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
- The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy: and Other Stories by Tim Burton
- The Science of Discworld II: The Globe by Terry Pratchett
- Wicked by Gregory Maguire (Gene bought this one)

Nick left with nothing which was very restraint of him.

Having only just eaten less than an hour ago we trooped upstairs to have Hainanese Chicken Rice at the shop that I've gone to since I was a wee lass. You don't even have to order now. You just let them know how many people need a seat and as you sit down they roll out the rice, chicken, broth and off you go! Two serves for $5.60. Now that's what I love about eating in Singapore.

Next stop was Pan Photo to visit Doris where Nick made up for his lack of shopping at Sunny Bookstore. We walked out of there with one 80GB iPod (Nick), a set of in-ear headphones and iPod Nano case (Gene) and an iPod remote (mine). After that it was time for the boys to stop for a beer if only to interrupt our shopping.

We decided we'd spent enough money but should get some clothes for Chinese New Year's day (you're meant to wear new clothes). We hunted for red shirts for the boys but were unsuccessful. It's red t-shirts instead. I managed to find a lovely red skirt which is about a million miles too long for me but I like the hem (well bottom 20cm) of my skirt dragging on the ground... ahem.

If you think that's the end of the shopping then (to quote Captain Jack Sparrows), clearly you haven't been to Singapore. We headed to Bedok to find some shorts for the boys so they didn't melt. This was a successful trip where they found shorts and I found the world's most comfortable bra. Win win situation for all.

Finally it was time to head home for a rest before heading out for a meal of more local foods...

Tonight's Menu
- BBQ Stingray - Gene's favourite
- Sambal Prawns
- Sambal Sotong (calimari)
- Fried Oyster with egg
- oyster omelette
- 10 x otah (fish cooked in coconut leaf)
- 30 x satay sticks (10 x beef, 10 x chicken, 10 x lamb)
- char kway teow
- another squid & veggie dish that I don't know the name of
- 1 x fresh coconut
- 4 x lime juice slushies
- 1 x fresh sugar cane juice
- 1 x grass jelly drink
- 1 x long neck of tiger beer

We're in the process of trying to introduce Nick to as many of the local foods that we love and crave when we're in Singapore. Needless to say we're all rather full.

So tomorrow I'll have some bak-kwa slices of marinated pork and whatever else that catches my eye before I run off to catch a plane back to reality. It's going to be a big day!

Ramadan at the Ritz

What more can I say? The Ramadan tent at the Ritz Carlton in Doha has a reputation for being the best in the city and I'm glad it was my first. The staff were friendly and helpful and happy to explain what the different foods and drinks were and how to eat them.

The wonderful Amy organised and booked us a table. All we had to do was turn up and enjoy the evening.

Food was plentiful and the Ramadan juices were fairly special too. I've never had date juice (with rose syrup, pistachios and some random leafy bits) before. Certainly not served from a large meter long pitcher that was being carried around the room. We tried our best to sample a little of everything but I failed fairly miserably, only managing one main sampler and one desesrt sampler.



Baklava heaven. Each piece that I took looked different and had different ingredients. Much of it didn't look like baklava as I knew it. I think I had 5 different pieces. There was a dessert that looked like mini churros soaked in sugar syrup. It just melted in your mouth. I was amazed that my teeth didn't fall out last night with the amount of sugar in the desserts!

There was a live band playing Arabic music while we were there. In between sets there was a man with an amazing skirt (really heavy fabric, I've been told this is something they do in Turkey as well) who spun around on the spot to music get faster and slower and then faster again until he came to a sudden stop (some five minutes later) and you could hear the fabric as it collected into one swirl around him. Now that's what I call flowing!

If you're ever in Doha during Ramadan I highly recommend heading to the Ritz for a feast. It was amazing!

Retiring Grumpus

In my defence I have been meaning to post a new blog during the last week and a half but it's been getting rather busy here in Doha with plenty of things to see and do... most of them work related so unblogable (if that's a word).

Our new villa is wonderful, albeit identical the the one that I moved out of, and we've met our housemate Nevine who is also wonderful. Gene & I are in the master bedroom which is larger than our flat in Footscray was and a little smaller than our place in Brunswick East, perhaps two thirds of the size. We bought our own sheets and they are the most gorgeous cotton sheets that I've ever owned. Soft as soft stuff as Gene would say. Most importantly they're not white. This is the view from just in front of the bedroom window. The little alcove where you can see the mirror leads to our ensuite.


The view from our villa is essentially the same as the view from my last villa with a different villa number on the door.

Most excitingly since my last post it has started to cool down in Doha. The evening breezes are actually cool! Apparently even the spa-temperature-pool has cooled down. Some of the local crew have assured me that "madam will need a jacket soon!", I hope they're right.

Aside from that there's not much to report. I made choc-chip cookies and dolmades over the last week or so. I failled miserably at biryani (planning to try again with different meat and less dairy products). My work hours have changed from a day shift to a late morning-evening shift which is more productive than the day shift was. This does mean that I tend to get up in the mid-morning and run for the shuttle. The evening sees me coming home, eating, doing logic puzzles and then falling asleep before the mid-morning hits again. Less time for blogging as Opening gets closer. 54 days to go!

On the food front, Amy cooked a wonderful laksa for us on Friday night. While I'm not usually one to order a laksa at home, this was one tasty meal! She made plenty of chocolate brownies for dessert as well... I may have eaten too much again. Seems to be what I do on Fridays... eat too much... This coming weekend we're planning to try the Ramadan tent at the Ritz Carlton. It's meant to be the best tent although I've heard the Arabic music can get a bit much.

Another reason that I haven't posted recently is that Grumpus took over for awhile and peaked yesterday when I'd planned to respond to Nai, Nick & Deb's comments. Many things were making me grumpy. One of the biggest things that made me grumpy was my iPod completely dying. It's cactus. It's telling me to see the iPod support site. I did that. I tried to restore the iPod. Failled. Tried to initialise it (like the site told me to). Failled. So now I'm going to get a new one from eBay. It's brand new in a box and should be Fed-Exed to me in about three days time. For now I'm carting my laptop around with me and there's no music on the way to work.

Not wanting to finish on a grumpy note... I should mention that yesterday I received my first Arabic love letter... well it's more of a note... Nevine taught Gene how to write our names in Arabic yesterday so he's written Sarah heart Gene (read from right to left of course). How romantic :)

Speaking of which, this is the view from outside the reception of the office at dusk.

Four Seasons In One Day

My computer (obviously not the one I'm on now) has thrown a hissy fit. IT are onto it but I figure I have a couple of minutes for a quick update.

Antibiotics are doing wonders. Can't possibly forget to take them as I start getting vague and dizzy when I forget. Missed today's check up though... whoops. Maybe on Wednesday when the doctors are in again...

The weather lately has been wonderful. The since Friday the weather has been a pleasant 32˚C during the day. Sometimes there was even a breeze that was cooler than the air temperature! I have a feeling the dust was blocking out the sun a bit and that's what caused the cooler days. Today the sky was rather clear and we were back to 38˚C. Happily our evenings are sitting on 28˚C so we get some respite from the heat.

Over the weekend I took Gene shopping at Landmark so that we could get some decent fruits & vegetables. Naturally the only fruit we ended up bringing home were dried cranberries, a necessity for life. Gene even got roped into installing Age of Empires II on the spice/nut seller's computer at the supermarket. Not sure how he ended up doing that... Gene reckons it was his glasses that made him look like a computer geek. It was a fairly successful shopping trip otherwise. We found a watch for Gene with visible clockwork that's self-charging.

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Well, I started this post five days ago and I figured it's time to finish it now.

Yesterday was our weekend making today is the start of a new week. All in all it was a good week last week!

Gene, Anneke, Mel and I made our first journey to the Souqs on Sunday. I think we ended up in the textile souqs but I can't be 100% sure. I base that thought solely on the large number of fabric shops that we passed by. It was a fairly successful shopping trip for me, although I'm far too short to wear the dresses that I was after (circle dress mentioned in a previous post). I think I'm going to get one made before I leave. I also found a dress that looked (depending on your point of view) a little like the dress the kid in Final Fantasy X wears (Gene reckons it looked Jedi). It had long bell sleeves and a hood. It was awesome! Sadly the small sizes were meant for people with a better build than I have. Again I may yet get this one made for me.

I ended up with a couple of wraps (100% cotton, I'm ready for Ramadan!) a top which is essentially a square folded in half diagonally and seamed to give it "sleeves" and an abaya which has a gorgeous domino pattern on the gauze-like material it's made of. The plan is to convert it into an overdress (which is not unlike its actual purpose). Beautiful fabric & made.

Speaking of Ramadan, there is every possibility tonight will be the first night! How exciting :) We're looking forward to checking out the Ramadan Tents at night to join in the festivities. "Chrismas everyday for 30 days" is the description we've had so far. Should be fun!

With only 69 days to go until the Opening Ceremony things are starting to get a little busier at which is always good! I like keeping busy, it's more fun that way and means that I'll get more done on my day off!

Yesterday was a fantastic day in every sense of the word. The lovely Amy Wee organised for us to have brunch at the Four Seasons and it was amazing. There's no way to really know how amazing that brunch is unless you go there but let's just say that the dessert room with a chocolate fountain you can smell from the lobby just made me the happiest girl in the hotel. I made it through about 7 courses, wait... make that 8 courses (five buffet and three dessert). There was a tasty selection of seafood, crayfish, oysters, salmon etc, freshly prepared sushi & sashimi, a caesar salad bar... and then there was dessert. We had a designated dessert time so that we'd actually eat some proper food before gorging ourselves on sweets. With an hour left of brunch after two hours of eating we got down to business. Amy enjoyed some chocolate covered prawns and cray tails among other more common dishes (there are photos). I must say that the fresh waffles were possibly the best that I've had. The drinking chocolate was good too... it went well with the chocolate fondue. The creme brulee was tasty although there wasn't much of a caramel top. Having eaten ourselves silly some headed off to the day spa while others headed home for a siesta. We decided to sit by the pool/beach outdoor bar and enjoy a drink before heading home. It was a big day!

Needless to say we skipped dinner and instead went home to relax on the couch while discussing how much exercise we'd need to do to recover from brunch. Something about exercise being 90% mental kept coming up...

Gene & I "exercised" by jumping into a taxi and shopping for a good deal on a PS2 so that we can play DVDs and, of course, games in our spare time. Gene figured that as we may end up moving it would be a good idea. Plus it's something that we've been talking about for a bit and they're quite small and cheap right now. So we ended up with a PS2 that came with 10 (well we got 11 somehow) games, two controller and a memory card. We chose to buy an additional game "Steambot" which we've been enjoying so far. It's a sandbox game and we get to play a blonde boy called "Vanilla". It's pretty funny. We're fairly sure he's got the hots for a girl called "Coriander". It appears everyone is a herb or a spice in the game. Good fun. Unfortunately as Gene's on night shift and I'm on day, it'll be about a week before we get to play it again as we're planning to play it together.

Okay well my backup has finished now so off to work. I can't believe I've been here for five weeks already!

Doha Days

Right now I'm struggling for a way to start this post. I’m struggling with a few things really. Things like what day it is (Sunday I think), why I’m awake but my brain is not (jet lag), what day is it (oh hang on we've already done that) which brings me back to why my brain is like mush. This is my round-about way of apologising for any incoherent writing ahead.

Doha is pretty amazing. There’s a construction site everywhere you turn. There’s a lot of development happening here and I’m fairly sure it’s not just because of the upcoming Games

I’ve only been here two days and I’m still loving it. The weather isn’t too problematic for me as more often than not I’m in air-conditioning. It’s just when you step outside and have to stand there for more than five minutes that it starts to hurt. We’ve got a buddy system going where you don’t go anywhere by yourself because the heat can get to you really quickly. I must admit there’s still something odd about having a chart on the back of the toilet door that rates the colour of your urine from good to dehydrated. I’m probably sharing a little much but I felt it was necessary

The villa that I’m staying at is fabulous! Gene, you’ll be happy to know that they have gas stoves in the kitchen. My bedroom is a comfortable size and my bed even more so. A queen bed for such a small girl is such a wonderful luxury! I love my air-conditioner in the room. It makes it possible to sleep without being stifled by the heat. I really couldn’t be much happier with the accommodation! By the sounds of things Gene will be staying two villas down the road from me which is wonderful considering he could have ended up in one of the other two apartment/villa complexes. I’m looking forward to seeing him again in a week and a half, although I do
feel like I should explore the compound a little more so that I have some inkling of what’s about! There’s a pool here and apparently a gym as well. I really should get up early for a swim but having fallen asleep at about 02:00 last night and having to be at work at 09:00 I felt that I could be slack on my first day. We’ll see how I do tomorrow!

My first day of work yesterday was a whirlwind of information, as first days are. Today was better although I found my cotton-candy-brain frustrating. The air-conditioning is both a blessing and a curse. Without it you melt and sweat profusely, with it on it sucks all the moisture from your body. I don’t think I’ve drunk this much water since I did the Murray Marathon many years ago!

Yesterday being my first day in Doha I settled into my room and then headed to work (voluntarily, they did say I could stay at home but why would you when there are people to meet and catch up with!). After work AG took Mel and I shopping for supplies. As soon as we reached the Carrefour (imagine a big supermarket with a hint of k-mart and deli) my jet lag kicked in. Mel had a list. I had a sliver of an inkling that I should get some food to cook for dinner. I decided to work from Mel’s list figuring that she’d been here for a day or two more than I had so she knew where it was at. Sadly
that didn’t help me spend less than her or buy milk to eat my cereal with. On the latter observation, I even watched her pick which milk to buy and offered a non-committal opinion. Stupid brain! After a few hours of dodging trolleys, small children and getting lost we made it home with a variety of items including vegies, bananas for less than AU$1/kg, baklava, soy bread, vegemite (because as an Australian you have to buy it), beach towels, pegs and Aussie grown carrots. We also realised that we had enough food to cook about 1-2 meals.

So it was Nando's for dinner as none of us wanted to cook dinner. The food was good (as usual) but the hot tea with mint afterwards was odd but pleasant enough.

One thing I have noticed here is that many of the locals think that I’m Philippino. This is not a huge concern to me but it does mean that I’m right at the bottom of the expat pecking order. Unfortunately this doesn’t mean that I’m exempt from random men trying to pick me up. Apparently the faux wedding band trick doesn’t work so well without a guy there. Shopping was still fun though and I’m looking forward to braving it again when I’ve
settled in a bit more.

My sense of direction is completely lost here. I’ve been to the office
twice now by two different routes and back to the villas by three different routes. I’m just glad I don’t have to drive here because the roads are a little unfinished and lack street signs. Luckily there’s an hourly shuttle to the office.

Well, I’m absolutely zonked. It’s only quarter to eight in the evening but I think it’s time to curl up in bed with a good book.

Passing Time

Well it's almost packing up my laptop time. As soon as I finish copying The Day My Bum Went Psycho onto my iPod to keep me company on the 14 hour journey I'll start rolling cables.

I'm at home with Zeus & Clio (the pugs) and Herman (the rat who needs a minder for a couple of weeks in September if anyone is interested) and it's pretty quiet now that everyone's at work. The sounds of snoring dogs, the dryer and my laptop fan is not surprisingly unsoothing.

My 55L travel pack is fairly full with my other carry bag keeping my travel pillow enclosed along with the ever popular mini-sharpies and lollies. Everyone should have a mini-sharpie. Happily my luggage is weighing in at under 20kg so I should still be able to do some shopping while I'm overseas :)

Dad & I have discovered (thanks to Fi) Skype which as he mentions on his blog should allow us to talk for free until he gets to China where Internet access could be a bit shady. Naturally we tested this yesterday. It's kinda funny hearing your laptop ring and answering. I'm still amused!

Last night we went to Dragon Boat for a delicious meal consisting of all my favourite dishes (salted egg chicken, salted fish tofu chicken hot pot, abalone mushroom, char siew). It would seem that I was craving salty food when I think about it. I promise the dishes taste much better than they sound.

I'm now just passing time until we leave for the airport in a few hours. Want to make sure I'm ready to check in early with all the delays that seem to be popping up lately.

Well, I'm up to the last disc of the five and this means it's time to double check all my packing! I don't think I've been this excited since I went to Japan!

UDO - Unexpected Day Off

It's my second day in Brisbane. Today I find myself armed with a two bananas and a plethora of tech gear with nothing more to do than explore the Brisbane. There was a small but important typo in my contract which means that I'm not insured for work until tomorrow so I got the day off after our safety & fire induction. I'm kinda wishing I'd brought the spare camera battery now. In fact I may yet ride back to the hostel to drop off my shifter, tape measure, leatherman (plus attachments), and mini-gerber (solstice). So perhaps I'll get the new battery.

Brisbane seems to be a wonderful sleepy kind of city. Admittedly this is largely based on our day out yesterday, which I am aware was a Sunday, but even this morning riding into the CBD for work during peak hour wasn't anywhere near as crazy as the Melbourne peak hour traffic. It's a great city to ride in and I'm glad Gene insisted on bringing the bikes. There seem to be bike lanes on most of the city roads and they're all fairly consistant in width. It's not a particularly generous width but it's enough to ride your bike in without being wide enough for cars to pretend they're bicycles.

Our hostel room is pretty good. It's got everything we need including a fridge and ensuite. We fell asleep to the dulcet tones of the didgeridoo and clapping sticks on our first night while last night there were just people talking and drinking. They seem like a great crowd.

I'm going slightly nuts over the number of times I've been asked in the last two days if I've seen a koala before but I guess that comes with the Asian appearance and the tourist maps of the city that mark us as being from out of town.

Yesterday we decided to take a ride into town so we could work out how to get to work at the Metro Arts building. Turned out to be an easy 15 minute ride with only one hill of note. We then enjoyed a huge lunch at the Pig 'n' Whistle in what I think is the Queen Street Mall before heading towards the famous South Bank. We detoured through St Georges Square in the hopes of seeing Spiegeltent being assembled but it would appear that it hasn't arrived yet and we're just a little too keen.

We visited the famous South Bank in the mid afternoon where we were greeted by a corvette meeting. Plenty of shiny cars that didn't really grab our attention. We briefly toyed with the idea of paddling in the wading pool. By wading pool I mean the 1m deep pool. Gene commented that it would be fine, we'd only be in waist deep until I pointed out to him that I'm only 1.5m tall and would be in far deeper than my waist. It wasn't quite warm enough anyway.

While we're on the topic of temperature... the weather here is gorgeous! Particularly after the bleary Melbourne weather we left. I guess that's another thing that's marking us as tourists. We're in t-shirts and shorts while the locals are in coats and scarves. Anyhow, we're making the most of the 23 degree days and soaking up as much sunshine as we can get. It's also soothing for the soul to not be in total darkness until 17:30.

Being the tech-geeks that we are, we were almost immediately distracted by the Suncorp Metway Super Screen at South Bank. A great outdoor venue with a good looking (and tidy) rig. I took photos. The rig was on chain motors for easy of rigging access. We were most impressed. The speakers weren't on chain motors though so less easy to move, but probably don't need to be moved much anyhow. We also discovered that the screen could swivel but I think I've been geeky enough for now. They were playing Mythbusteres if anyone cares.

After our brief moment of geekiness we discovered the art & craft market there where I bought a Snuggle Pillow because I miss my nice dense head-moulding pillow at home and this works in a similar manner for less cost. Mum if you're reading this, it's filled with tiny polystyrene balls, kind of like bean bag balls but the size of your glass bead from teddy bear making days. Easy to clean and easy to travel so I'm happy. I slept much better last night with it than I did the night before. Gene watched a couple of buskers but had heard most of the jokes before so we headed back to the markets. Not before I managed to find a couple of brochures on Putt Putt golf though! We're going to get a car and check out some places when we have some free time. The courses up here look like lots of fun and car hire's not so bad.

Supermarket shopping was nothing to write home about but I was very excited to find bananas for a whole three dollars cheaper per kilo at the fruit shop. No savings at Coles, I think they standardise the prices there.

Last night was a quiet night consisting of roast chicken for dinner, Dr Who (thanks Nic) and plenty of sleep. Tonight we're catching up with Gene's Auntie Vicki for dinner in the West End. Tee hee, I'm still amused that I'm staying in the West End. Always wanted to go to the West End but was thinking more England way than QLD. One step at a time though!

Wish you could all share the lovely weather with us!

A Few of My Favourite Things

A good meal shared with friends is possibly my favourite thing in life.

Last night Gene, Nick & I went to Iku-Izakaya for dinner and it was lovely. We had a bit of fun finding a carpark but once we got there it was lovely. Friendly service and great food. We had the Ozeki Set which was rather filling and overall well timed in terms of the courses. After dinner we decided to take a stroll across the fish-shaped bridge (well it looked like a fish from the restaurant) and discovered that it led to the Blowhole Sculpture in the Docklands. After playing on the air-pressure platforms, climbing all over the slide, jumping on the springy foam ground and swinging on the swings we headed back to Nick's for a lovely cup of tea - or beer for the boys.

After that we watched Napoleon Dynamite which was amusing but weird before retiring to bed to read our respective books.

It was a pretty good day all round really. Good food, good company, a movie, some reading, more knitting and a play in the park. What more could a girl want?

A Complete Day

Well now that Superman's returned safe and sound so we can all get ready for the next cheesy installment of Pirates of the Carribean. Mmmm bring on that Captain Jack Sparrows :)

It's been a great day today. A complete movie experience this morning.

For the price of an adult movie ticket, a complete movie experience includes:
1. Something going wrong at the start of the movie session. eg. subtitles being off screen, movie being out of focus, sound not working or in today's example starting half an hour late with no apparent reason. (When asked the cinema folk apparently replied, oh you're here for the 10:45 session? Hasn't that started?)

2. Junkie snack food with no nutritional value but plenty of chemicals that make you fill "full" - travel style pies. This is an additional cost to the movie ticket and also comes in a combo with drinks that are sized to make you wish there was a fifteen minute interval.

3. Kids. Kids running around the cinema. Kids clambering over the seats. Kids playing with the screen. Kids asking for icecream. Kids refusing to go to the bathroom before the movie starts. Kids going to the bathroom 3-4 times on average through the movie. My favourite though is kids asking "what's happening?" after sitting with their back turned to the screen looking at other people. I love school holidays.(I mean what parent in their right mind would take an eight year old, let alone a group of them, to sit through a 152 minute movie?!)

The movie was enjoyable and I was excited to discover that I actually knew some of the people in the credits. Think I still have their numbers. Oh yeah... I'm special I know. A couple of the guys I worked with at my last job were stunt guys. Didn't realised that they'd filmed it locally. Just goes to show how in touch with the entertainment industry I'm not. *sigh* I should work on that.

After that we came home and enjoyed some of the many left overs in the fridge for lunch. Dad's been going all out with dinner lately and I'm thinking I need to get some exercise if I want to keep up the eating. Especially with the proscuitto wrapped shrimp we had the other night. Mmmmmmm

I'm doing much better on the crochet front with my top. It kinda looks a little huge though but it's at the correct finished size so it's probably just me. I'm pretty small though and I'm about a couple of inches smaller than the smallest size. Guess it's going to be a slightly loose top on me. I've finally made it past the nightmarishly simple waist section, finshed the bodice and now I'm onto the incredibly repetitive sleeves. I may yet complete the top...

The night was capped off with dinner at one of our regular family dinner restaurants, Straits in Wantirna. Excellent Hainanese Chicken Rice as well as Malaysian cuisine. Highly recommended. There's on in Doncaster as well. Try their Har Mee.

After a good feed we headed to Borders to enjoy the end of financial year sale. I ended up with Hanging Out with the Dream King (not obsessed, just focused), The Eyre Affair and Death: At Death's Door (marvel at my focus!). There is plenty of reading to be done tonight! Happily I can read and crochet. Two favourite activities in one! Just need to work out how to blog and do theatre stuff at the same time as well and my non-social life will be complete!

Eigo no menuga arimaska?

Well, it's been awhile between posts I know, but Internet access has been limited by time more than anything else. So here we are at the airport in Narita. Gene & I are sitting in the Yahoo! Cafe overloooking the runways of Terminal 2. It's been a fantastic week in Japan and we wish we could stay on. However, all good things must come to an end... and we're a little broke but rich for the experiences.

Before I continue, I'd like to appologise for any creative punctuation but I'm using a Japanese Dell laptop with Japanese keys. This wouldn't be a problem if I didn't touch type but suffice to say the apostrophe key is shift-7 and the @ is beside the P key... it's all a little screwy...

Anyhow, when I last posted (settle in folks, I've got just over three hours till departure and a weeks worth of goss) Gene & I were heading to Matsumoto, namesake of our favourite Japanese restaurant in Melbourne.

亜 Argh!!!! I just hit a random button and everything turned into characters!

Matsumoto
We decided to take a day trip to Matsumoto which is approximately 2 hours and 50 minutes from Shinjuku where we were staying. We didn't know much about the place, except there was a castle (Matsumoto-Jo) and we used to eat at a restaurant with the same name. The train ride was pleasant, as almost all train trips in Japan have been. We spent the time reading up on the town in the Lonely Planet guide and learnt a bit about the history of the town and what the local delicacies are. There was the usual city to town landscape followed by acres of rice & wasabi paddies. A couple of lovely looking mountains and fog covered hills and we arrived at the station.

During our trip we learnt very quickly that the tourist information centre is our friend. It's your best bet for finding someone who speaks English anyway. The lovely people at the station's info centre gave us a map and directions to Matsumoto-Jo as well as showing us a picture of a landmark that we needed to turn right at.

Armed with this info we exited the station and stepped into a sleepy Japanese town near the Japanese Alps. The streets were small and quiet with a pleasant mix of modern and more traditional Japanese architecture. We did manage to find a goth-punk shop on our travels which we had to check out of course. Gene ended up with some badges and after a round of arigatos we were off again.

To be honest it wasn't that far a walk to the castle, but we managed to get distracted again, but with a slightly better cause. We crossed a bridge to be greeted with by a statue of two samurai frogs on top of a toad. Naturally we had to stop and investigate so we travelled down a quaint little street that we rapidly realised was a small tourist area. This would usually mean nothing but tacky little trinkets and overpriced postcards, but this place was different. You could buy some gardening tools as well as food and random gifts. We hunted around the street for an explanation of the frogs that had greeted us and possibly passed many, in Japanese, but finally I decided to buy a small glass frog for Gene's mum, Cathy, who couldn't join us that day due to work appointments. It was a good thing that I did that too, because with the frog came an explanation of its significance.

The History of the "frog" on Nawate Street
Before the Meiji Era, Nawate Street was just a bank lying between the river and the moat. After the Yohashira shrine was built in the year Meiji 12 (1879), the bank became an approach to the shrine.

Horse carriages were not allowed to pass through. The shrine began to promote various entertainments to gather visitors and prosper. People began to start businesses there, which attracted many visitors.

Because of the vehicle-free street, shop owners on the street said that visitors can buy kaeru (I wish I could post the three characters that formed this word) and go home kaeru (again with the characters but only two this time) safely.

Since then, people started to call the street "frog street" (kaeru = frog). So the shop keepers put a big frog statue at the entrance of the street to watch over us and keep us safe.

After browsing the rest of the stretch we took a detour through a Shrine enroute to the castle. We dug out our guide book which advised us on the ettiquette of visiting Shrines and managed, we think, not to make fools of ourselves passing through. There were many signs surrounding the Shrine, probably telling us what it honoured, but our Japanese reading is a little lacking, so its significance was a little lost on us. Sadly this was a bit of a trend, but we muddled our way through.

We finally arrived at Matsumoto-Jo and it was hard not to get a good picture of the place. It was a stunning castle. We crossed a moat which we later learnt was one of three that used to surround the castle and stamped our entry tickets with the free woodblock stamps that were at the entrance. If you make it to Japan, take blank paper with you to the tourist sites and stations, there are often woodblocks with the place name and pictures to be stamped. The gardens were meticulously manicured and even included some "space azaleas".


Matsumoto-Jo

We toured the Castle and I tried to capture it with my rather poor camera skills but was too excited to hold the camera particuarly still so there aren't many pics. Inside the many levels of the castle were various artifacts from the Edo period. Most of the signs were in Japanese, but we carefully read all the English signs. The rest we just had to guess at. It was like being in year 7 history again with Mr Sinclair making us guess what different objects were and their purpose. The stairs in the castle were all disconnected and crazily steep. There are many signs asking you to "mind your head" as the ceilings were Sarah height. It took us getting to the top level to find out that the reason the stairs were so steep was to make the castle easier to defend. I can't imagine how the fully armoured samurai who lived on one of the lower levels ever managed to get up to the war room on the second highest floor. We were struggling in normal clothes with our bags! There was also a hidden level which couldn't be seen from the outside where food was stored. There were wooden shelves on this level where stones could be dropped on any invading armies. Castle windows varied in size to allow for both arrows and guns to be used in the castle defence. Matsumoto-Jo is also one of two castles that remain in Japan (according to the guide book) which still has a moon-viewing balcony. It was a red painted balcony with a shin-height railing that offered a view of the moat, complete with Japanese koi and swans, and most likely the moon on a clear night. As it was day when we visited, we didn't get much moon viewing done.

After checking out the castle we headed towards what we thought were the souvenir tents but turned out to be two tents filled with bonsai. After a 5 minute game of charades with the attendent, a good will ambassador came over who translated for us. (Turns out we could have had a tour of the castle in English after all...) She explained to us that it was a bonsai judging competition and we had to pick our favourite bonsai and write down the numbers on the card. As you all know, Gene & I are highly qualified in bonsai judging... so we didn't take too long to finish up. We handed the cards to the nice men at the end of the tents who insisted that we spin a wheel. I spun the wheel first and a little white ball dropped out. The nice men spoke at me in Japanese and I looked puzzled and for some reason resorted to saying hai (yes) a lot. While I was trying to walk off with said white ball to work out at a distance what I was supposed to do with it, the nice men stopped me and it became clear that I was meant to leave it with them. Gene then spun the wheel and out dropped a little pink ball. The nice men then got very excited and rang a bell loudly before handing Gene a little box in exchange for the ball. We both then got a little excited and found in the box was a small clear ball with Matsumoto-Jo etched in the centre. Gene has since gifted it to me and it's going straight to the pool room. I love it!

We paused for a quick drink at the vending machines and were stunned to find Thorpie's drinks had made it to Japan!

Having toured the castle we headed to the Museum which had a few exhibits from the Edo period. We saw some more Japanese and Korean weapons, many little Japanese dolls from the doll festival, some brightly coloured textile balls which were the toys of princesses and their maids and, rather strangely, some large wooden phalluses. We learnt from the Lonely Planet that this was part of a festival that they held in September, however we can only assume that it has to do with fertility as there wasn't much information otherwise.

After all the stairs and bonsai judging, we decided there was only one part of our Matsumoto cultural experience left to fulfil, food. The local delicacies of Matsumoto were soba (my personal favourite), crickets (I believe they're deep fried) and raw horse meat. We headed off to the information centre and asked where we could find a soba restaurant as that was our priority and discovered that it was just two doors down from where we were. While at the soba restaurant we dined on zaru-soba and the raw horse meat, which we were fairly sure they killed in a very humane manner. There were two pieces each, one was a little fatty and the other was just a flesh piece. It was just like eating beef crossed with venison really. Except the fatty bit tasted like butter with the texture of meat. It was most odd but pleasant and we discoved the taste was a a gift that kept on giving. This prompted me to buy some chewing gum on our way home. Having sampled two out of three delicacies we had to get some crickets. With the help of the phrasebook Gene tried to explain to the staff at the restaurant that he wanted to eat some crickets. After we determined that we weren't talking about sport, the waitress walked out the door beckoning us to follow. She took us to the shop nextdoor and explained to the man at the counter what we wanted. They giggled and pointed us to some cans. Gene bought two so anyone who's up for some crickets head our way.

Thus ended our day in Matsumoto. We headed back into Tokyo and met up with Gene's family for dinner and a briefing on what was happening the next day...

Harajuku & Shibuya


We'd been advised by many people that Harajuku was a must see area in Tokyo. It was where all the goths, cyber-punks and otherwise oddly dressed people congregated in their spare time. It was a great little area and most people where happily posing for pictures as soon as a camera was vaguely in their direction. A highlight was they Tokyo Rockabilly Club who were dancing to some great hits from the late 50's. John Travolta eat your heart out because these guys had some seriously big hair. There were no poodle skirts for the girls either, they dressed in their leathers as well.

I'm not sure if it was planned but we stumbled across the Meijii Shrine which was fairly grand. It was our first big temple so we spent a bit of time there. We were lucky enough to see a bridal procession while we were there. It was a very elegant and dignified procession and very beautiful to watch.




We walked through the park and spent some time watching the people practice wooden sword fights, contact jugglers, poi and Mama Africa drumming (complete with didgeridoo). Gene says hurray for Japanese rastafarians.

Once we'd had our fill of people watching, Gene & I headed towards Shibuya. This was by sheer chance as we were actually trying to find the shops that the kids in the square had gotten their quirky outfits from. Through zen navigation (and some signs) we determined that we had actually left Harajuku. We saw many designer shops along the way and checked out the Japanese equivalent to Episode where there were ruby slippers and crazy costume fashion galore. Some more zen navigation found us in Cat Street which is home to the Pink Dragon, an impressive rockabilly shop with a very gothic interior. This shop had everything a rockabilly lover could want, down to the comb for the immaculate hair styles. We hung around for a while looking at the stock while enjoying a mix of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Cherry Poppin' Daddies music before deciding that we were tired and it was time to head home.

On our way home,we passed the worlds coolest car park exit which had a revolve to turn your car around so you didn't have to reverse out. Pics & movie to come.

One vending machine dinner, a train ride and we were lost. We decided to try and find the other train station that was near the Tokyo Hilton on the E-line. We'd been travelling on the Marunochi line and decided it was time to get adventurous again. We later worked out that we'd gotten off two stops early. We finally made it back to the hotel and decided to have a night in.

A 5 Star Night In
You may or may not have guessed that Gene & I don't spend a lot of time in 5-star hotels. We discussed this on our way back to the hotel and figured that we should probably try to enjoy the hotel a bit as well as Japan as both were experiences we were unlikely to share again soon. There was a pool, gym and spa listed in the services/facilities guide so we decided that was an excellent way to unwind after a day of walking.

Needless to say we skipped the gym.

When you arrive at the health & fitness centre you check your shoes into a little shoe locker and then head to your respective change rooms. The womens change room had lockers containing a towel and towelling robe as well as a rest area with television and chilled water. There were also sterilised hair brushes for your convenience as well as cleanser, toner and moisturiser for after your exercise.

Gene & I slipped into the pool and paddled around a bit before agreeing to meet back in the hotel room after our respective spas. You see, it wasn't actually a spa as such, but a Japanese bath so it there were seperate baths for men and women.

You enter the shower/bath room and there were mirrors along two sides of the wall. In front of these mirrors there are stools and shower heads where you sit and shower before you enter the baths. There are no clothes allowed in this room and coming from a western society where women are pretty seperated in showers it felt a little odd to shower with other women. Especially in front of the mirror. It was oddly liberating and a rather pleasant, almost ritualistic, experience. I was grateful to have an older woman there who showed me what the procedure was as I'd never been to a Japanese bath before. As I was just following her lead, I stepped into the cold bath before I knew it was the cold bath and as a result was a little shocked. Despite the cold it was quite pleasant and made the transition into the hot bath even more relaxing. By hot bath I mean scorchingly hot but I could feel all my muscles relaxing and the aches and pains from the day melting away. I hopped back into the cold bath briefly (very invigorating) before rinsing off and getting dressed.

The rest of the night we spent reading and catching up on some much needed sleep before the big day ahead of us.

Tokyo Disney Land
Okay, okay, I know that we've come to a country steeped in culture and I proceded to spend a day in Disney land, but it was such a great experience! I don't regret a minute of it. Except perhaps the 130 minute wait for Thunder Mountain (total ride time 4 minutes).

The trip to Tokyo Disney is in itself an experience as, from Shinjuku, it requires a platform change at Tokyo station. We thought Shinjuku station was big... We finally made it onto the right train, without getting lost, and in no time at all we were at Disney land.

While I thought I'd end up with lots of pics from Disney land, I was too busy looking around at all the people (mostly Japanese) and enjoying the rides to take any pics. Our first stop was Adventure Land where we saw Tiki Town's animatronic birds singing classic hits like Fever and I Wanna Be Just Like You in Japanese. We didn't really understand much of what was going on but chose to sing along in English and clap our hands anyway. The guide seemed rather insistant that we hold our hands with our thumbs and little fingers pointed out and say "aloha" a lot which was amusing and confusing all at once. Thunder Mountain, my first roller coaster ride was next. I took a picture of some spanners at the 1 hour mark and after 130 minutes exactly (just as the board had promised) I got to go on my first roller coaster. It was good fun, but even better rides were to come! After that we trooped off to Pirates of the Carribean where we queued for about an hour and a half. We kept our spirits high and possibly the people around us entertained by saying "argh" a lot in our best pirate accents. There is something rather surreal about going on rides with commentary when you can't understand the commentary. The only English on that particular ride involved "Avast you scurvy scum" and various other piratey phrases. We ate some greasy but oh-so-good fried chicken before booking our "fast track tickets" for Space Mountain. We then enjoyed Micro Land (Honey I Shrunk the Audience in 3D) which had great special effects involving air jets that mimicked mice running up your legs and some impressive projections of the theatre being blasted with lasers. We also checked out the Haunted Mansion (also predominantly in Japanese) which was awesome. Moving walls and amazing projections once again. I have to hand it to the Disney folk, they know their animatronics. Next was Splash Mountain as Gene was positive that I'd enjoy a flume style ride. It was a 90 minute wait and we chatted happily with the American students in front of us who "loved our accents" and proceeded to apologise if they'd been offensive or had bothered us. They were quite lovely really! Every 15-20m or so there was a sign stating "you may get wet". Gene also assured me that if we were in front we might get a bit wet. So just before we got seated in the front row by the attendant, I took off my top layer and took the ride in my singlet top an jeans. Good move. We got absolutely soaked on the last big downhill. Gene's shirt was soaked (luckily he'd brought a spare one) and I got a face and lapful of water to boot. The photo taken by their camera was great though so we bought a copy to bring home to show our parents. We dried off in the Star Arcade where we played Mario Bros and Bomber Man. I sucked at both. It still wasn't quite time for us to ride on Space Mountain though so Gene & I checked out It's a Small World before we had a couple of Mickey Burgers to take the edge off our hunger. Space Mountain was AWESOME. They had a great hyperspace lasery bit before plunging you into darkness with the odd star to light your way. A series of extremely tight corners saw Gene & I swinging around in our seats (as much as our safety brackets would allow). If it wasn't almost 22:00 and the park about to close, I would have loved to have gone on it again.

After a big day of Disney we headed back to the hotel to try and work out our accommodation for the last two nights of our stay.


Nikko
The next day we headed to Nikko on the shinkansen with Gene's parents and their friend Ian. Nikko is a popular tourist destination and has more temples than we could have imagined. Unfortuntely the weather wasn't on our side and it rained most of the time we were there. We still saw 5 temples while we were there and admired the architecture while wondering what we were looking at (again the signs were in Japanese).

I'm going to leave you all here for now, and finish this draft later as Gene & I are going to get some food before wandering up to our departure gate, wherever it may be...

See you all back home!

A whirlwind of colour & noise

Wow what a day! Gene & I have been in Tokyo for 13 hours and have managed to pack in quite a bit.

After a day of flying we arrived rather tired but excited in Japan. Gene braved the complicated looking foreign exchange forms and I tried to get our rail vouchers exchanged. Gene was more successful as the JR Rail Offices had closed just after our plane landed. While we were hunting the correct (albeit closed) ticket window we missed our hotel shuttle bus by 6 minutes. After an hour waiting in the deliciously cool 17.6 degree celcius Japan night we finally made it on the shuttle. We spent our first night in Japan in the Narita Hilton which was wonderfully comfy and boasted beer vending machines about 10m from our room door. The view from our hotel room was pretty special.

Our first morning saw us enjoying a breakfast which melded Western bacon and eggs style food with rice porridge & miso soup. After this we headed to the hotel shuttle bus area where we saw a bus waiting. We tried to work out which bus we needed to jump on to get to Narita train station. As the bus was leaving, we worked out that it was indeed the bus we should have been on. Happily the next bus arrived and although it didn't go to the Narita train station, it did take us to to the airport where we could get a train from Terminal 2. It turned out that was ideal as the Narita-Tokyo express train we got on didn't stop at Narita station.

The trip to Tokyo took just over an hour and I took several (slightly blurred) photos of what could be rice paddies or could be wasabi farms... my agriculture knowledge is lacking I know.

We finally arrived in Tokyo's Shinjuku station at 12:30 and took in our first glimpse of Tokyo from the station. Our phrase book has come in most handy as I headed to the ticket office to ask for directions to the Tokyo Hilton. After securing a map with a friendly and simple looking red line to our hotel and the reassurance that it was only 20 minutes away, Gene & I set off to brave the streets with our luggage in tow. How lost could we possibly get when we had a map? Apparently a little... On closer inspection our map turned out not to have street names, only building names. Now you'd think that this would be really handy in a city of skyscrapers, but the thing that we noticed about Tokyo so far is the lack of logos and garishly bright signs at the top of buildings. They seem to be reserved for the lower levels. So we were stuck walking until we found a map in front of random building. Unfortunately the "you are here" arrow had been stolen so it took us a while to get our bearings again. We'd taken a turn too early or late, it was hard to tell, but we knew we were within blocks of the hotel.

At about 13:00 we made it to the hotel where we bumped into Gene's Mum, Cathy, who was in the lobby trying to find out if we'd checked in. We headed up to the hotel room and settled before heading to Gene's parents' room to snack on some rather beautifully decorated chocolates.

We headed out to the Keio department store to grab some food. It's great being in a department store trying to read the directory when it's not in English. It's even better trying to order off a menu when it's not in English. Our phrase book came to our rescue again and we managed to get a menu in English while providing our waitress with some amusement. Gene & I stuck to our usual favourites of katsu-don and oyako-don for our first meal.

After that we decided to find Kabukicho which was noted as the entertainment area where we could find all the latest Japanese arcades and more. We got there by means of a small alleyway that had stall selling everything from cheap sunnies to Japanese copies of Charlie Chaplin's short films. I'm amazed at what you can find in Japan! We entered the area which was hard to miss with all the flashing signs. I managed to find what I thought was a bead shop within two minutes of us arriving there and headed in to check it out. It turned out to be a craft department store with everything from "inner wear" (lingerie) to snake skin for craft use. I found the brand of knitting needles/crochet hooks that I was after (at 20% off!) but I'm holding out till we find the shop first.

Across the road from this shop was an adult toy shop (we think) which seemed to have vending machines selling capsules that contained everything from designer wallets to dildos. We were a little confused and somewhat disturbed but we didn't let it deter us from exploring the area further.

Walking around, it's hard to miss the multitude of pachinko & slot machine halls. Being the avid gamblers that we are, Gene and I decided that Pachinko, a game that apparently involved little skill and have little monetary incentive, was the way to go. In a whirlwind of colour, movement and much noise, we spent 3,000 yen shooting ball-bearings around the machine with gobsmacked looks on our faces. Unsurprisingly the clerk at the pachinko parlour was more than happy to give us a copy of instructions for the game in English. In all fairness though, everyone in Japan seems happy to help you out if they can. It's a wonderfully helpful and polite place to visit! Having not spent enough money playing games with little return, we both gave the slots a turn. We both got a pay out but not before making idiots of ourselves when we tried to store our tokens in the drink holder. It didn't go so well, mainly because there was a big hole in the bottom of the drink holder so all the coins fell out.

We decided we'd played enough confusingly noisy but oddly amusing games for the day and headed to another arcade for more familiar games. We played a Japanese drumming game before we decided to join in the photo booth culture. We spent what felt like an eternity posing for the camera, Gene was a little tall for some of the close-ups, but it was great fun. The language barrier proved amusing as we couldn't understand the instructions and were pressing buttons at random. We stepped outside to wait for our pictures, but they just didn't seem to be printing! We flagged down a clerk and after a game of charades pointed us to another booth where he demonstrated that we could add pictures to our photos. It was awesome! We spent another 5-10 minutes adding random characters and cartoons to our photos and then they printed. A game of Time Crisis 3, some poor drumming on my part and it was time to meet up with Gene's folks. On the way back we checked out a capsule hotel and saw many more interestingly named establishments.

The 100 yen shop grabbed our attention on the way to dinner but not nearly as much as the excitement of buying dinner from a vending machine. Well, that's not 100% accurate, we bought a token from the vending machine which we handed to the chef who cooked everything fresh. The main excitement came from not knowing what you'd ordered, just the cost. Gene & I ended up with some white meat and rice while Gene's parents ended up with some red meat and rice.

After dinner we explored the area further to find ourselves surrounded my men's clubs and ladies' clubs. We finally made it back to the Shinjuku station after Gene & his dad had been propositioned by various men offering to introduce them to lovely Japanese or Russian women for a while.

So here we are back at the hotel.

Now, it has to be done, it's an important topic of discussion when travelling, the toilet. When you sit down on the toilet, it flushes gently, apparently to help you pee if you're having troubles. It's actually a little disconcerting when you're not expecting it... Gene says "for all the good a bidet is, it might as well shoot water up my ass (or if you don't happen to be sitting on the toilet at the time, all over the bathroom)" Thank you Gene :)

Anyhow, accompanying pics to this rather long account are to be found at: my Zoto site. We're heading to Matsumoto tomorrow to check out the castle there.

Life's tough

Okay, that's a lie. I'm currently sitting in the bar at the Changi Sailing Club in Singapore while enjoying the sea view.

Current weather conditions
Temperature: 30°C Dew Point: 25°C
Barometer: 101 kPa Wind: E 5 km/h
Humidity: 74.6 % Visibility: n/a

We've spent the last two nights at the Changi Cottage which is part of the Aloha Resorts. Apparently their former Prime Minister stayed at the cottage some time ago. They've got the newspaper articles on the wall to prove it.

Gene & I headed to the Esplanade (Theatres on the Bay) which is affectionately known as "the Durian" over here. I would have gone with fly eyes first but that just goes to show the culture difference. We had lunch with some family friends at a Japanese restaurant before heading to Toys 'R' Us to buy travel Pictionary to play with the kids. After that we did some shopping - Gene got a pair of prescription sunglasses for SIN$78. We decided to be adventurous and independent and take the shuttle bus back to the resort from the MRT (train) station. After walking around the station for about half an hour trying to find the shuttle departure point we gave up and headed to the taxi rank. While standing at the taxi rank we saw the shuttle pull up next it and thought it was our lucky day. We were sadly mistaken. The shuttle wasn't planning to leave for another 45 minutes and no we couldn't wait on the shuttle. So off we trooped to get a drink and pass the time. This involve getting cold drinks (fresh lime juice) and in my case eating lots of snack foods. Here's a snack food for all the kids playing at home.

Buttered Corn in a Cup
Ingredients
1 can of sweet corn
butter to taste
salt to taste

Take the can of sweet corn and heat up the corn. I like the microwave for a fast snack, but you could probably steam some fresh corn if you got really keen. Don't over cook it though, just enough heat to get the corn nice and warm. Add butter and salt to taste and mix thoroughly.

Serve in a bowl with a spoon. For the traditional Singapore serving style, serve in a polystyrene cup.

It's one of my favourites. As you can see I'm fully aware that I can make this at home, but it's just soooo good to have it here! I also snacked on Mwah Chee (excuse spelling) which is like a sticky rice roll thing dipped in crushed peanuts. It's hard to explain. It's a sweet snack though.

Anyhow, we managed to pass the time but had forgotten to ask the shuttle driver the all important "where is the pick up point" question. Luckily we saw the shuttle parked by the side of the road again so we hiked across the park and up to the bus. The bus driver opened the door and told us we had to hike back to where we came from and he'd be there in 15 minutes. We asked if we could just get on the bus there in 15 minutes and ride with him to the pick up point. No. So back we went in the heat to our previous location.

Now you'd think that this would be the point where I'd write - then we got on the bus and arrived back at the Chalet without a hitch...

We got on the bus and arrived at Aloha Resort Pasar Ris (who'd a thunk it... there were two Aloha resorts and we'd caught the shuttle to the other resort). We weren't too stressed though, because we'd been told that we had to get the shuttle to Pasar Ris first and then it journeyed on to Changi. The only problem was we were on the 18:45 shuttle and the next shuttle to Changi didn't leave until 21:30. We decided to revert to plan B and take a taxi. Sadly due to our rather Australian accents the taxi driver gathered we had no idea where we were and took us on the scenic route before anouncing once we were in Changi (we saw a sign) that he had no idea where the resort was. Thankfully the sign that we'd seen was that of the Sailing Club that is next door to our resort.

It would seem that Gene & I have a bit of work to do before we try the Amazing Race. :)

We passed the evening with Pictionary (competitive pictionary is really weird! It's also strange playing it with people from a different culture because pictures mean different things...

Anyhow, I'd better let Gene jump on the computer and check his email. We've both received the great news that we've got work on the Brisbane Festival (thanks Mel!).

If anyone is interested in pics from the trip thus far, there all at my Zoto site

Next destination:
Narita

Ladybugs & Hedges

Tomorrow we wish the Beach House goodbye. The house is empty now and it looks great!

I spent today cutting the hedge in our courtyard today. I swear it's at least a third bigger than it was when I started. Should have done a before and after shot. Suffice to say I took off enough foliage to fill four large garbage bags. I discovered that we had many ladybugs living in our hedge which was great. I love ladybugs. I did however either get poo-ed on by a lady bug while trying to move it. Either that or it was laying an egg but with my limited knowledge of ladybug biology, it's hard to say. Suffice to say it left something long and green behind as it walked. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole incident... a little amused I think :)

We made Mum a roast for mothers' day and I've eaten way too much. It was just soooooo good though! There's sticky date still to be eaten... Possibly not for a few hours yet. Damn my lack of self-discipline when it comes to eating. I even got some really nice vanilla custard to go with the pudding... It would seem that I'm a little food obsessed at the moment.

On a more travel related note though, I've finally set up the photo hosting site at Zoto so that I can post some photos there and link some to here. For anyone curious about Herman I've posted a picture of our little friend. Here's hoping that link works!