A Hop Across the Pond - Niagara Falls

Lovely to talk to Mum and Lisa today (and Jared - briefly). We all agreed to update the Bandwagon more frequently - and this goes for everyone. :-) Even if it's just a sentence to talk about the week. Okay?!

A Hop Across the Pond

We've done a heap of stuff since July - the most exciting thing was our recent holiday to North America. We spent two weeks and visited four cities: Niagara Falls, New York, Montreal and Toronto.

Niagara Falls

We stayed on the Canadian side, along with all of the other tourists! The Falls are amazing - every single minute there's enough water going over the Falls to fill one million bathtubs.

In order to make the most of our two days, we bought an Adventure Pass. The night we arrived we collected our passes (they didn't have enough 'adult' ones, so ours had "ADULT" scrawled in black marker pen over the "child" label on the front), donned a blue plastic poncho and headed to Niagara's Fury. We learnt a little about Niagara's history and got very wet (one of those "4D" movies). We spent some of the evening watching a fab sound and light show that was in the park opposite the Falls. The lights were projected onto water jets and looked amazing.

The next day we walked along the Whirlpool Rapids, went on the Hornblower - the boat that goes to the bottom of the Horseshoe Falls (we got a red plastic poncho), and did the Journey Behind the Falls - that is, we wandered through some tunnels and looked the water rushing past a couple of openings (and we got yellow plastic ponchoes). We also had a good look around Niagara Falls, including all of the (slightly tacky) 'man-made attractions', like Ripley's Belive it or Not, or dinosaur mini-golf. We didn't go into any of the attractions - it was fun enough to walk along the street and people-watch.

Our second night we spent in the Hilton hotel with views of the Falls (the first of our three 'fancy' things booked on our trip). It was great - we even got to watch the fireworks from our room! And they were below us!!

All in all, Niagara Falls was very touristy but a fascinating natural beauty. Just remember to have patience and that everyone else is there to see the same things as you. ;-)

I'll post this now and update on the other cities very soon.
The (very very abridged) photo album for the trip is here.

Brooklea Park BBQ

I agree with Mum - it's July! !?!

The highlight this week was our impromptu BBQ on Saturday. We bought a little charcoal barbie during the week (one we can easily pack into the shed, or a cupboard, or take in the car - you can see it in the photo below). The weather seemed good so B went and bought charcoal and some vege sausages while I sent a message to some of the people at Uni. Our neighbours' son and partner are staying with them at the moment, so they joined us on the lawn and two of my workmates also turned up. It was a really lovely afternoon with sunshine, tasty food and drink, and great company; and it turned into a fun evening too - when it got too cold to sit outside our neighbours went home and the rest of us ended up playing the Wii for a few hours. :-D

Not much else going on for us last week - I tried to have two days off but worked from home for one of them and then had a ChemNet event, two Spectroscopy in a Suitcase sessions (one I couldn't go to so my team had their first trip alone) and an education conference.

Bruce says that everything he got up to is in the last post.

This week I've got to sort out a bunch of Outreach events for July - though I had today off (mostly.. had some emails to do in the morning) and it's Bruce's last week at the school (so he's not doing much at all :-P).

Your turn!

I want more power tools

We've got a bit of a break between visitors so I thought I should write a quick update.

We were expecting Darryl at some point before the baby was born, but he surprised us by calling us a few days before the weekend to say he'd be here along with his family. Luckily I had just spend a large chunk of the previous weekend cleaning the spare room (for the guys to come and fix our shutters) so we were okay. It was great to see Darryl, Alicia, Charlotte, William and Spencer, and although Oscar got a little upset about having to share his toys early in the week (especially after his nap when he was still tired) by the end of it he was happily (for the most part) playing with everyone. He seemed to like following Charlotte around, copying her, and later he and Spencer both copied each other.. which was good, because they were playing together, but not so good if they both wanted to play with one little toy :) I think it's a small taste of what's to come for him though. Daz was brilliant.. he made us the wardrobe (which we're still in the process of filling), fixed up the front security door, reattached the linen press door.. just generally did those tasks you really need power tools to do. We repaid him as best we could with beer and chocolates, but I think we still owe him big time.

This weekend Rach arrives, which will be great too. She's staying for a week, and I know Os is going to love having family here who don't want to ride on his bikes or read his books ;) Sadly Rach wont be bringing power tools to fix up whatever is left, but that's okay.. I think Chez has got a day off work so I'm sure they'll get up to no end of hijinks.

Speaking of Chez, she's doing really well. Only 10 weeks to go, and the little girl is very active. Os calls her "baby sister" and occasionally points out toys for her :) The time seems to be flying by now. We put up some photos of Cheryl so you can see her belly too.. I don't think it's as big as it was for Ossie. Either way I'm sure you'll agree she looks beautiful.

And me.. I'm on a weird low-carb diet. I'll write more about that when it's over if you're interested.. Then I'll have final numbers and the like. Either way, it seems to be netting a result for me, which is good.. because I do miss delicious carbs.

Update from us

As usual, it's been a while since we posted anything on the bandwagon, so I thought I'd give a bit of an update. This week has could have best been described as Hellishly busy. After a few weeks of not much going on at work, suddenly a client came to us with a massive job and a really tight deadline.. today being said deadline, and I'm writing this over my lunchbreak while awaiting any more feedback from them. Unfortunately, this was also the week in which I've got two Iaido demos.. one on Sunday, and the other yesterday afternoon. This basically meant that the last few days I've been starting around 6 or 7am so I can get the work done and also so I could leave early Wednesday for the demo. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but the sum result is I'm pretty tired :)

So the demos. Yesterday afternoon Takeo and I were at a big park in Adelaide for a half hour or so. We did some kata together, then faced off against each other with Takeo attacking and me defending.. then we did five each alone (we were clapped at the end!) and finished with some bamboo cutting. The crowd actually built up to be pretty large. Cheryl has posted photos, and I'll chuck a couple in here.. you can see it's fairly sparse in the first one, but by the end there's people behind us watching as well. The demo Sunday should be a bit less stress.. it's just for my Dojo in Reynella, so myself and a couple of students will do about 3 kata each and that will be all.

If you want to see all the photos you can see them here.

We hung around at the Moon Lantern Festival after the demo to eat some delicious Korean food and watch a few of the shows on the main stage. Oscar also tasted his first ice-cream.. which was Cheryl's ice-cream, but he didn't want to share ;) We got it off him when we offered him a banana instead.. he loves his fruit!

Oscar is growing up so quickly and learning a lot. He's gradually adding more words, some from us (like "nan" and "up") and some from childcare (like "ta" and "more") and some he just seems to pick up himself. He started saying "nose", "mouth" and his favourite "eye" suddenly one day. He really likes to mimic us too.. sometimes you wont realise you're doing something (like scratching the top of your head) until you see Os doing it too.

He's becoming much better at feeding himself.. some foods are easier than others of course, but he loves using a spoon, fork and knife when he can. He also loves reading books.. I think that's his favourite quiet time activity. Sometimes he'll even sit down and look through the books himself. We play a lot, he loves chasing and hiding games, and really likes exploring outside. He can get a bit quiet and shy with new people, but I reckon it takes about 20 minutes for him to get used to them (and it took about 2 minutes with Sam :))

We're looking forward to seeing Mum and Nana next week, even if there is a fair bit of cleaning the house still to be done. I'm getting Wednesday and Thursday off work (which I appreciate even more after this week) and then Friday Cheryl and I will go out for a few drinks with friends to celebrate my birthday. Gotta make the most of the experienced babysitters :) Monday is a public holiday too! It's going to be a good week :)

Hmm.. I think that's it from me. Hopefully Cheryl can pop on and say how her work is going, and anything I might have forgotten. I'd better get back to work!

Cake day

Last year I made myself a black and purple black forest cake for my birthday. I selflessly took it to work and shared it with my workmates. This year I won't be making myself a birthday cake - I've made summer cupcakes for tomorrow.

Our office has a roster for cake. Every Tuesday, someone brings in a (usually home-made) cake. Fortuitously my cake day is this week - so I'm starting my celebrations early. It took me about 3 hours tonight to make and ice these cakes. I don't have a real oven in my flat - just a microwave convection, so I can only cook 6 cakes at a time. The icing also took a long time - washing out the piping thingy between every colour gets to be a drag, but I think the results are worth it. Now I just have to hope I get them all to work without damaging them.

Wish me luck!

Now can someone else post something please?!
:-P

...and rest!

I've had a busy couple of weeks working hard taking physics to the public. You can see a great photo of me engaging with some policemen on the IOP blog. The days haven't been especially long (we were out on the South Bank from noon until 5pm) but they were very tiring. The weather was great for us - sunshine and around 28 degrees every day - but it made it difficult to sleep at night. Especially when it was still 27 degrees in my flat when I got home at 8pm!

I went to Ireland for the weekend, we took Physics in the Field to Spraoi in the Park. It was a great event - in a sunny park in the middle of Waterford. Unfortunately our kit didn't turn up, the courier who assured us overnight delivery just didn't deliver. I'm glad that we use common house-hold object for our tricks, it meant that Alex and I could just head to the Tesco supermarket and buy everything for the weekend. We didn't have any logos or giveaways and our stand looked a bit haphazard but people still enjoyed learning about our tricks and often came back to our table again and again. :-)

Today I'm at home, waiting for a parcel delivery. I've realised that I have been writing my address wrong - Willesden Green in the tube station and the suburb is Willesden. But it's easier to write the address as follows (and I've updated the Contacts page too):

The Annex
24 Aylestone Avenue
London
NW6 7AA
UK

Please update your address books and tell Nana too.

Time for someone else to update the Bandwagon. :-)
p.s. Glenn, when you're back can you update the buddy icons?

Kerkyra with pictures

More photos, as promised -- press play, then rollover the slide-show for the "full-screen" icon, kick back and enjoy. :-D

Actually, that's exactly what we did in Greece -- a whole lot of relaxing by the pool, a little bit of exploring in an air-conditioned car, and a fair amount of searching for decent Greek food (strangely hard to find).

The trips themselves were somewhere between average and downright horrible: late/early flights, lots of waiting, the stupidest aeroplane seat-configuration I've ever seen (so close together that you couldn't really bring your knees together!), and general chaos on the part of the officials from both Kerkyra and the holiday company, Olympic.

(Our 3am bus, 6am flight happened as predicted. What was not predicted was the hundreds of fellow passengers suffering the same situation -- hundreds of Brits with hangovers, or sunburn, or missing luggage; girls with "flip-flops" and sarongs flirting with boys in cargo-shorts and ridiculous sunglasses; families and individuals with ridiculously large, heavy luggage (what could they possibly be bringing back?!); officials with less idea about what was happening than the human cattle they were responsible for. I remember saying to Dee, "The only way to make this airport more miserable is for some of the fluorescent lights to start flickering." Then a thought struck me: "Or to fill the place up knee-high with stagnant water. That might do it.")

But once we were there -- brilliant! Brilliant despite the crummy accomodation, despite the dodgy bar-tender with his penchant for late nights, loud music and funny cigarettes, despite the narrow, dangerous roads and crazy scooter-riders. Eventually, under the brilliant sunlight, all these things took on a certain romance, a gleam -- they became as much a part of the whole experience as the smell of the ocean, the gentle buzzing of bees and wasps, the sound of our fellow holiday-makers splashing in the pool. Okay, the airport didn't, but the rest ... walking into supermarkets and buying groceries without a word of english is just, just, awesome!

So yes, we explored the entire island by car while we were there -- hiring it from a boy who couldn't have been more than 10 (his uncle came to do the paperwork, but it was the boy's sale, have no doubt). He tried to convince us to get an ATV (all-terrain vehicle) instead: a roll-cage, four chunky tyres and a 250cc engine, no windshield or floor, bucket seats ... Of course we stuck with the little (air-conditioned) Hyundai, thank you very much.

Corfu Town is the main metropolis, and we spent a day walking through markets along tiny streets, dodging scooters and keeping out of the midday sun. It's really crazy how weathered the buildings are -- I kept expecting to hear a crash and turn to find our way back blocked by rubble! We also found beaches, both pebble and sand (hot, hot sand!!), everything from "British" beaches (a whole lot of pale bodies and east-end accents) to secluded ones used by locals and those in the know.

I think the pictures say it all really.

Oscar's day on the farm

Hi everyone!

Yesterday we took Oscar to the miniature farm barn for a friend's 2-years-old birthday party. We dressed Os in some cold weather gear and he met a lot of animals for the very first time. The first part of the party was a bit of a tour and feed then it was pony ride time. All of the kids were too scared! Apart from Oscar, who sat on one for a little while. They were really cute ponies (I know what I want for my birthday!) and if they could have held my weight I would have been up there in no time as well! ;) Some of the little girls ended up putting hair clips into the pony's mane and leading it around the yard. Next was farm equipment time. I think Os enjoyed the tractor ride the most :) Then all of the kids went inside for some morning tea and cake. Oscar had his milk and then sat next to his little friend while he played with a serviette. It was a very cute party and it tired the little guy out. He fell asleep on the way home, so instead of trying to get him into the house without waking him we drove to the local shopping centre and Damien and I took turns going in to get lunch and eating in the car while Oscar slept (sneaky! :) We took heaps of photos, of course :)

Today we've had a quieter day. We went to the shopping centre for lunch and spent the rest of the day at home. Not sure what we'll do tomorrow. Probably enjoy the public holiday indoors with the heater on :)

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.)

VISAs and netbooks

So my VISA extension application was sent off a week or so ago; yesterday I made the appointment for a biometric ID card which -- now -- all "foreign nationals" will be required to have (and carry? I might start carrying my passport -- once I get it back -- and ID card together in some kind of RFID-blocking wallet thing). It's pretty bad, really -- £465 for a 12 month extension, then when I rang up to book the appointment (which MUST be within 15 days) the only available slot was ... 15 days later! Talk about making things difficult! But I'll take the day off work and travel down south on the 'tube to wherever the Border Agency is.

We're still hoping to get it back before our next holiday, because I'd like to visit Marrakech. If we don't, it will be a week in Wales instead!

In the meantime we're keeping out of trouble. Last weekend we got up earlier than usual to bus down to the London Eye for a speed-boat tour out to the Thames Barriers.  Dee has always wanted to see them, and it was either than or a lunch tour -- and we both decided we always do foodie (or drinkie) things. Besides, "a lunch cruise on the Thames" sounds a little more ... mature ... than either of us are willing to act!  So it was a speed-boat, travelling up to 45 knots (which I think is around 40mph) in the cold morning weather. They gave us warm rain-jackets along with the life-jackets, and we were glad they did! Frozen fingers from holding on (you have to -- we jumped over a few small waves and rounded corners dramatically) but at least nobody fell in.

After the cruise we had breakfast nearby, then went looking in electronics shops -- Dee wants a netbook like Dayna's!

After a few hours walking around and bussing between shopping areas (like Oxford Street) we still hadn't found the "new" netbook, a Samsung NC110. It's the next version of the NC10, which was very popular (and therefore out of stock all over the place). I think the difference is the battery -- the NC110 is meant to get 9 hours battery life on a single charge, which is pretty amazing. But it's not in the shops anywhere (and Dee's been waiting for ages) so this week she ordered it online.

(It is meant to arrive today! She's very excited.)

After that we headed home for a nap. No kidding! We were on the speedboat at 9am, and had a long evening planned, so it was really just being practical. A couple of friends who have moved to London showed up at about 5pm (Martin -- he was in Jack The Ripper The Musical! with me; and Helen, his girl), so we headed in to China Town and had a delicious meal.  (I tried "crispy shredded beef", and it just tasted like batter and sauce ... some of the more interesting items on the the menu included squid, braised eel and (I was so tempted) pigeon. The only thing that stopped me is the state of pigeons in London!)

With dinner settling we took our leave of Martin and Helen and wandered towards Leicester Square and the Empire Cinema -- we had tickets for the new Star Trek movie!  Empire Cinema is great -- it's where they had the London premiere, apparently, with a bunch of famous actors and whatnot -- with extra comfy chairs and an incredible sound system. The Enterprise flew past and we rocked in our cushioned places; photon torpedoes exploded on the hull and we shuddered with the screeching metal. Very much fun!

I should probably upload some photos from the speedboat, huh?

Blue-eyed future Sword Saint ;)

Just a quick update from us.

Oscar has calmed down a lot - he's on Losec for his reflux - the Mylanta we had him on previously wasn't doing the trick. It does help, although sometimes it can still be difficult getting him to sleep.. but he's not awake every 45 minutes all day and night now, so it's a big plus. We're hoping once he reaches that 6 month point we wont need to give him the medication.. often that's when it settles down anyway.

Cheryl had her shopping day in Melbourne on Saturday (for our anniversary I got her a return ticket).. she spent most of her time (and money) at the DFO at Southern Cross Station, definitely worth a look if you're ever visiting the rainy city. I looked after Oscar for the day.. from 5am when Cheryl left until 9pm when she returned. Thankfully now he's got his medication he was much more relaxed and actually managed a few hours of sleep in there.

The other thing that helped keep me sane over the day was my new iPhone - Cheryl's anniversary present to me.. well, a combination of Cheryl and Kevin Rudd really. I was able to hold Oscar and still surf the net or play games I had downloaded. It was much better than my previous method of passing the time - staring into space :)

This morning we all headed to Goodwood for Iaido, because we had the Grading Certificate Presentations. I am now officially Ni-Dan, which makes me a sensei and also meant I got an art name - a name specific to the style to represent me. My name is "Go Seki".. the "Go" part is from Shihan's art name (Go Ho) and indicates that we have come from the Australian school.. and the "Seki" part means "stone" or "rock".. which was Shihan's (and the Grandmaster's) opinion of me I guess. I hope it's solid as a rock, and not rock-headed ;)

Oh, and finally there's a few more photos of Oscar up - http://www.flickr.com/photos/damienmason/3495448177/in/set-72157613379231082/ Cheryl took some fantastic shots, and I think it's pretty safe to say Oscar's eyes will be staying blue now :)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everybody. I hope you all have had an enjoyable long weekend.

(more new photos over at flickr)

Oh, and big thanks to Auntie Dayna for the present, you can see him enjoying it here

Decorating and cleaning

Hey all,

We finally got the rest of the decorations for the baby's room this week. It's a collection of vinyl stickers of birds in flight.. we stuck them up this weekend on the main blue wall. I've put some pictures up on flickr so you can have a look.. although they were pretty tricky to photograph, so the wall is a different colour in each shot. It should give a fair idea of how it looks though.

Today we hired a carpet cleaner and picked up quite a collection of sludge from our carpets.. we mainly wanted to do the baby's room and the lounge, but we had a bit of time so got some other areas cleaned as well. It's very rewarding to look at the disturbing brown gunk in the bottom of the machine and know that at least now it's not in the carpets any more :)

That's about it from us for this weekend.. now we're off to a much deserved dinner at a Japanese restaurant on the beach. Huzzah! Cheryl has planned something secret for next weekend that doesn't involve cleaning or looking at baby furniture, so it should be a refreshing change.. I don't know what it is though. Should be fun :)

Painting and Belly Watching

Hey all,

Just a bit of an update. We've started painting the baby's room.. you now all know the gender, so I don't mind showing you the colours :) We've got a light blue for most of it, and then a feature wall in a nice bright green. You can see photos of the progress here. The plan is to finish it off tomorrow, on our public holiday (huzzah!).. assuming I don't sleep in until 12 like I did this morning ;)



We also took a few photos of Cheryl for the week 24 BellyWatch. You can see them here.

We've been looking around for a cot and all the trimmings for the last couple of weeks.. we thought we had found the perfect one at Toys R Us (on sale no less), but unfortunately they don't deliver as far as Morphett Vale and we had no way of getting it from the city to our place.. and the local Toys R Us doesn't have it. Ah well, back to the drawing board. Assuming we can get the painting finished this weekend all we have planned for next weekend is steam-cleaning the carpet so we should have some time to look.

My general plan is to have the room all completely finished before you guys all visit in December, so we have a bit of time still.

i'm going on holiday!

After days of rain and grey clouds, I'm just about to get on a bus then a plane to head to Spanish sunshine. woohoo!!

I will bring photos back and maybe send some sunshine while I'm away.

*big hugz* to everyone