HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAYNA!

I know, I know, we've already said it.. on facebook.. google plus.. some people maybe even in person. But dammit, this is tradition, so here we go..

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAYNA!!

Ken's birthday pub hike

Last weekend was a long weekend, and also friend's birthday, so on Monday we high-tailed it onto the tube and down towards Hampstead Heath. His name is Ken, and (strangely!) he went to primary school with Dee. Now, I hope at this point you're thinking something like, "Wow, they stayed in touch for that long!", but the truth is much more serendipitous ( may have already told this story) -- Ken was a student at Swinburne when Mark, a Uni buddy of mine, was tutoring. Mark recently moved to London and "dossed" at Ken's for a while. So at Glenda's birthday -- Mark's girl -- both Ken and Dee knew fewer people than everyone, so started chatting. So. Very. Bizzare!

Anyhoo, it was his birthday last weekend so we headed out of our precious safety-zone ("the city") to a suburb. Turns out they've got sun, people,  cafes, greenery! So we arrived at the beer garden and met some of Ken's friends, then I supped a wee dram of uisge whilst Dee enjoyed the red wine. We chatted, ate little nibbly things (calamari, salmon fish-fingers, lamb koftas) and generally enjoyed the sun -- although as the afternoon wore on it threatened rain.

After lunch (and a delicious chocolate cake courtesy of Glenda --  thanks!) we all decided to walk off the meal in Hampstead Green, a nearby park -- although it's bigger than any park I've seen in Aus, just like Hyde Park in London central. We wandered across field and dell and came across a fair! Ferris-wheels, skill games, spinny-aroundy and upside-downy rides! Dee, Ken and I all tried the archery. None of us won a prize, but Dee did have the dubious achievement of almost hitting a "carny" (i.e. fair worker) with an arrow! Remember kids: wine and bow & arrows don't mix. (I kid, I kid, we wouldn't want to get rolling drunk on a school/work day/night -- really, the carny almost got himself shot by ducking out in front of us to retrieve some arrows from the targets. I mean, come on! He was asking for one in the behind!)

It was weird being in the middle of a green space and looking back towards the "urban jungle". It was also getting muggy -- the rain was on its way but taking its sweet time about it. We got to the edge of the park, grabbed some drinks from the supermarket and had an impromptu picnic in a field, while around us people threw frisbees and kicked soccer balls. Decided we'd come back another weekend and play tennis and/or lawn bowls! How sophisticated!

When the rain started, we bid adieu to Ken and company, boarded a bus and headed back home. As always, more photos here. (And I'm not if you need to be on Facebook, but Glenda put some photos up too.)

We're going to the zoo zoo zoo...

It was a vaguely sunny Sunday, the middle of a long weekend - no better time to take a trip to the Zoo. Vicki, Steven, Bruce and I all jumped into Bruce's (mostly) shiny new car and off we went. About an hour later, we arrived and parked on the grass (?!) as directed.


It was fairly cold and windy for the first part of the day - but that didn't stop us enjoying watching the elephants! They were so funny! Initially they were messing about in a little pool. It had a small waterpipe and they were stepping on it to make the water spray everywhere (clever things). Next thing, two of the elephants ran into the pool by the waterfall. One moment they were there, the next they disappeared - they didn't teleport somewhere, it was just the pool was a LOT deeper than it looked! It was fantastic to watch them playing.


We didn't follow any particular plan - we just wandered around the zoo, watched random animals and took lots of photos. Well, I took photos until my batteries went flat. :-( My photoset is here. And since Vicki's batteries didn't go flat, her photoset is here. Sometimes it's sad to see animals in cages but it's obvious that Chester Zoo looks after the welfare of the animals - they have inside and outside spaces, there are toys to play with (even HUGE toys for the elephants) and at least some of the habitats are designed for the animals. It's been ages since I'd been to the zoo - think I might not wait so long until the next visit (probably to another zoo). :-)

We're going to the zoo zoo zoo
You can come too too too...

A hydrocarbon- and hydroxl-fuelled weekend

Ah, back at work on a Monday morning. I'm enjoying my new job, actually - we even do things that could be considered ethical: enabling a micropayment economy in some of the poorer parts of the world, therefore boosting the economy and giving humans access to funds which they've never had before (e.g. in parts of Africa it's only something like 5% of people who have a bank account ... and we complain when they shut down our country branches!!).

Certainly better than letting rich people move their money around the world in order to let them stay rich ;-) and avoid the taxes that the rest of us poor working chumps have to pay. But enough subversive prosthelyitising! The point of this blog entry is to tell y'all what we did with our weekend - and it was all about friends, fermented grains and fossil fuels (and future fuel-cells, ahah!).

On Friday night we went to Chris's work drinks at a dingy little bar called the King's Arms in Holborn. Now, if that's where the King's soldier's spend their time, I'm surprised that Scotland didn't conquer England years ago - okay, a little unkind, it's a fun place to hang out but it's certainly shabby. Made all the more shabby-looking by Chris's entire office standing outside with pints of beer!

Strange phenomenon - when the sun comes out everybody is at a pub somewhere. And there are enough sprinkled throughout the city and surroundings, but they're always so full that people are spilling out the door, around the building, across the road in the local park. Strange, strange, strange.

So we had a couple of drinks and met a few new people Friday night. (Chris later went out clubbing with our mate Stolly, but Dee and I headed home for an early-ish night.) Saturday we caught up with another Aussie named Mark for lunch at the Union Tavern nearby. Bangers and mash for me, yum! After lunch we took Mark back home, and found Chris, Tina, Colleen and her friend Murray all having a wee party!

So many people in the back-patio area that we picked up the couch and took it out with us. Highlights: big chats about everything; more people turning up randomly; Chris bringing out a fern from his room, "because Planty was missing out"; yummy take-away Indian food (and lots of it).

On Sunday we got up early and headed to the British Motor Show (by way of Giraffe for pancakes and smoothies). So many cars! Trucks! Vans!



I walked around with Mark, a rev-head from way back. The coolest things in the first half of the building were the concept cars - with brightly glowing ninja-headlights, doors that swept up and back like wings and dashboards that looked like they belonged on the Starship Enterprise.

There were also a bunch of "green" cars - from low-emission petrol to hybrid (petrol and electric), diesel to biodiesel to other biofuel, fully electric with batteries or hydrogen fuel-cells. There were cars with recycled plastic bodies and solar panels, cars you plugged in to the wall at night, even a solar-powered bio-diesel Lotus Elise sports-car (in fetching brown-and-green forest colours).

I like seeing the electric cars, but most of them looked either a) ridiculous (square boxes on wheels, or bubbles that made the smart cars look sleek) or b) like something out of a Japanese cartoon (much better, but will they actually mass-manufacture them?).

Then it was onto the other side of the building for the petrol- and diesel-guzzling supercars -- Ferraris and Zondas and Lamboghinis and manufacturers I've never even heard of (but Mark's eyes glazed over and he drooled like Homer Simpson when he saw them). Lot's of things for going really fast - there were even a couple of motorcycles, so I was happy.

(Chris apparently sat in a Mini Cooper-D (for diesel), pretending that he really might buy one to the person minding the stand. Then when we finally caught up with him in the afternoon, he was genuinely considering it as a car to get sometime in the future! So I guess they did their job.)

Home to a barbeque (it's great, that patio!) and then we watched The Castle (classic) to try to introduce Colleen (Scottish) and Tina (English) to Australian culture. Not sure they got it :-).

Thank you everone and hello again

I know it's been a while - I've had a busy month or two..

Thank you all for your cards and pressies and happy thoughts. I did rather well with booty this year - I bought myself a second-hand wii (and wii fit), my Uni friends gave me Mario Kart Wii (so if you have it too, we can play online!), Mum and Dad sent me some lovely summer tops and a funky table runner that fits perfectly on my table with drop-down sides (that I got for free), Glenn, Dee, Damien and Cheryl got together and today I awoke to a package of magnetic tantrix (it's such a fun game!) and belgian black and white chocolate flakes (apparently good for hot chocolates, desserts, or "Spread butter on a large piece of bread and sprinkle with white and black chocolate flakes. Simply delicious...". I've not tried that yet, but maybe it would be a good dinner. heheh..), I bought some purple shoes with Nana's money (Thanks Nana, they're great!) and Bruce gave me a 3D Labyrinth Puzzle (sounds easy - it's not!) and some mead (yummo).

After being out with the Lab constantly, it's finally the school holidays. This means I'm doing admin stuff for the next couple of weeks. Although I'll have the Lab out again mid-August. It's nice to not have to leave the house between 6am and 6.30am. It also means I have a little bit more time for catching up on things.. and I've just uploaded the photos from the May Bank Holiday Weekend that I spent in London.

So, here are some photos from the BBQ at Glenn and Dee's two months ago. :)

We had a good evening - as you can see here, the boys got the BBQ going. It was burning well.. until Troy shook it and smoked everyone. It was the first time the couch made it out into the back yard (I think). It's good to hear that the couch still gets to be a part of things. Unfortunately, Planty didn't join in the fun that night, but even so, there was enough good food, drink and conversation for it to be fun.

I'm going to leave it here.. and update again when there are more photos. heheh..

*big hugz* to everyone.
And thanks again!

six posts in a row, doo dah doo dah

Helloooooo from Manchester.. again.

Actually, this is just a quick one to say that I spoke to Glenn today. He and Dee have moved and the house is good - but it's new so they don't have a phone line yet.. so they don't have internet yet.

Dee's mum will be visiting them soon, so Dee's going to have some holidays (Glenn has to work). However, because we get Good Friday and Easter Monday off, Glenn's coming up to Manchester to visit. Yay! I'll make sure I take some photos and post them afterwards.

In other news, my first trip out with the Lab is next week (I'll take photos) and in the meantime I'm trying to get schools interested enough to book in. I wouldn't have thought it would be so hard to convince high schools to book a free programme... but that's how it is at the moment.

Busy busy (so I should go to sleep now).

Somebody else better write a post next or I'll just keep up the tally. *grin*

*big hugz*

Spiderglenn, spiderglenn

I've been trying to get our phone line connected for over a week now -- you would think it would be easy! Worse, the phone needs to be connected before the broadband connection, since ADSL uses the same phone line. I just spent three hours on the (work) phone to BT trying to get it figured out -- apparently they've sent out an engineer now, and we'll get updates by SMS.

Seriously, how hard is it? So frustrating, especially as I've already organised to have the ADSL connection done on Saturday. Even more galling is the fact that BT have already sent us a bill! The cheek of it! So in righteous fury I stole somebody's hands-free headset, jumped on the phone and set in to do battle with BT. I was on hold for most of the three hours, then transferred between departments getting a little bit of info each time, before finally ending up on the line with the one person in the company who knew what she was doing. A quick line-test, then repeated to make sure it wasn't a once off, and she sent out for the engineer AND contacted the billing department to make sure we weren't paying for a service we'd not yet enjoyed.

Thank the stars there is someone paying attention at BT.

But it's been a bit of a traumatic week really -- okay, "traumatic" is dramatic (heh heh), but it's sporadic and emphatic in a paddock full of haddock. Thank badness it's Friday!

Forgot to mention some good luck on Sunday afternoon: whilst looking for el cheapo bargains, Dee bought a couple of "scratchies" and gave me one ... and I won £50! Nice one! Spent it almost immediately on lunch and (some on) the Wicked tix, but still good to win one. Could've been the £250,000 of course ...

Work this week has been wacky -- lots to do, not a lot of time to do it in -- and my "to do" list has grown and grown.

Dee's had a couple of job interviews now, which I'm sure she can tell you about, so to celebrate we went out on Wednesday night to a Turkish restaurant on Brick Lane (yep, we love Brick Lane). Very nice food, hopefully traditional (it looked that way -- cooked over hot coals under an ornately decorated brass range hood thingy) and not too expensive. It was meant to be our "night out" for the week (weekend notwithstanding -- still have to fill it with glee).

Unfortunately, and here comes the trauma, we got locked out last night by the cleaner! I know, it's very cosmopolitan to have a cleaner, but I think he cleans all the flats in the building and it seemed like a small price to pay (considering we don't have a broom, a mop, etc). Anyway, he arrived just as Dee was leaving, so we were both looking forward to returning to a nice clean house.

Which we did. We just couldn't get in.

When Martin had finished he left and locked all the doors, including the deadbolt which we haven't been using for a couple of reasons (deadbolts are dangerous; there's a heavy door downstairs; it's 93 steps up to our flat; we don't really have anything worth stealing) and therefore left the key inside. Bugger.

With Martin's phone number also inside the flat, we knew we wouldn't be able to track him down. Dee looked, in case he was doing another apartment, to no avail. We also knew that our landlord-neighbour would have a spare key, but the mobile number we had for him was now disconnected! A conspiracy, I tells ya!

Nothing to do but leave a note on the landlord's door, head out for dinner somewhere and hope that he was coming home tonight. We ate at the Dove -- the solid pub-grub place mentioned in a previous post -- and this time I got to try a beer I'd last had in Belgium, the Chimay Blanc (or white, as the brit's would have it). Yum!

The night wore on with no call from our landlord, and we began to despair ever getting in, until Dee had the bright idea of knocking on our other neighbour's door and, if home, climbing over the wall that separates our balconies and in through one of our windows. A bright idea primarily because it would be me doing the climbing, not her. Luckily there's no neighbourhood watch four floors up.

Long story short (altogether: too late!), he was home and I managed to scuffle over the trellis and onto our side -- don't worry Mumsie, it's a fairly low wall and I crossed on the roof side, not the down-down-down to the road side, so there was never any danger. The windows were open (they're quite big windows) so I could quickly get in, open the door from the inside, and stand around basking in the glory of being the hero of the hour.

Even better, we got invited to our neighbours house-warming party on Saturday night, huzzah! So I think a movie during the day, Lis, then a party at night. As for tonight, Dee already organised dinner (Spanish this time) and drinks with a friend named Julie -- "Jools" -- from her old work. We're meeting near Liverpool Station at around 6:30pm. Shouldn't be too late a night but it's always nice to meet new people.

Ooh, before I forget, here's our new address and phone number, providing it ever gets connected. I'll also update the Contact Details page in the sidebar.

26 Minstrel Court
Teesdale Close
London E2 6PQ
+442077396267