The bonsai

Especially for the Suzannewoman: There's a little shoppy close by that sells gifts but also advertises someone's clearvoyance. A man called Nigel Gould is the medium to be exact and I had a little chat with him while Nicole went to the Pakistani supermarket. It apears that Australians are actually open minded enough to consult him which I would not have thought. He added though that there are slightly more women than men in this country (YAY!! ;-P) which explains part of his statement.

We drove into town to visit 2 modelrailroad shops. We don't have much to do anyway so why not? This is a sign explaining the parking regulations where we parked for the irst of the 2 shops. They usually have a working-week part and a weekend-part. The "P" stands for the max. number of hours you may park there.

This is the new Adelaide tram. It replaces the ancient and historic ride that was still here last time we visited. it was noisier and slower but had a thousand times more character than this new piece of poo.
Oh, Adelaide only has 1 tramline btw. Let's not compare public transport here with a city like Amsterdam. (Yes, A'dam is WAY better with public transport)

The second model railroad shop was a HUGE disapointment because they stopped stocking european N-scale models, bastards! Now I'll have to import all the way from Europe damnit... I'm even happier for spending close to EUR 1000 on some rolling stock before I left! Anyway, we also had to go to Bunnings for some screws for the bed but they didn't have them. Bunning sells little Bonsai kits though...

Parked infront of Bunnings was this old Ford "Prefect" (yes, the "r" is correct there). It's a beauty but the seats were in a horrific state.

So about the Bonsai kits. I ended up buying a bonsai (bon=shallow tray, sai=plant) growing kit and a little plant. I've always loved plants and growing plants myself (as you could tell by the ammount we used to have in our apartment in Amsterdam) and now I want to try Bonsai's. With the kit came a little book explaining a LOT about Bonsai with plenty of examples, really cool. Also in the kit were a small Bonsai pot, fertilizer and metal wire to shape the plant. Oh, and a small bag of soil with a health warning about not breathing in the air from the bag. Probably because of possible legionaires disease or something. I'm quite excited about this and hopefully soon we can visit a nursery (common word here for what we used to call a "gardencenter") with bonsai tools. I'll keep you all posted!

The pancakes

Our usual morning routine often directly after waking up: check email and blogs. What can I say? Others read the paper or watch TV...

Blogging action again from Nicole. She's much more advanced than me. Also she smells a bloggortunity (blog-opportunity - I have to submit this to the urban dictionary!) from miles away...

Tony, Nicole's father, working with the speed of light.

Then, all of the sudden, after all this hard photographing I was hungry and decided to make some pancakes. I remembered I had bought 2 little jerry can-like containers of pancake mix. Add 3.75 ml of water and you're ready to rock and roll. I can do that you know? No sweat!

There we go, pancake nr. 3 or so. I like to use good solid butter instead of some oil. So I usually put a piece of butter on a fork and use that to grease the pan with.

All this effort resulted in a whopping pile of 7 pancakes.

Put pancake on plate, add cok... sugar to satisfaction...

And direct pancake into mouth and bite shut. I must add that I will never use this mix anymore. I didn't like them. They're the American kind. Incredible amounts of bubbles in them and they felt very greasy... Not a big success.

The desertwind

They forecasted a hot day today and for once they were right. By 9:30AM it was 30 degrees Celcius.

Since it was still nice and cool in the house everybody stayed inside as much as possible. Especially Nicole coz she's down with the flu.

I worked on my CV today, I reckon it's almost finished.

By 11:30AM the temperature had risen to 35 degrees Celcius.

Looking up to the sky you wonder how it could possibly be that hot. This was because there was a very strong wind coming from the desert today.

It was a rather weird experience for me. These kinds of clouds usually mean rain, cold, winter, storm etc.

The strom came eventually, there was even some rain. The sky was beautiful.

This sky too!

I kept myself busy by working on my coffeetable model railroadtrack. It's coming along well. I'm going to think of the table itself now soon.

The comeback of Ned Kelly

"Tommo".

Today we went out in search of bedlinen which we didn't find because our mattresses have a standard size but finding a bedsheet that covers both at the same time is a whole different story. In the end we bought a pair of pillows. Pictured is the pillow section.

Back home Nicole's dad, Tony, was working on our bed again. It's coming along and it's looking fantastic. This here is the headboard.

The apricot tree is covered to keep the birds out. All the apricots turned yellow over the weekend!

Then we had to get some more varnish for the bed. So we went to Bunnings again.

Here we see Nicole in "blogging" action.

Finally Nicole found her pair of polarized glasses. It hasn't been easy to find a nice pair!

Back to normal, well, for us anyway.

Back to everyday life again. This means sleeping till 9 o'clock, have breakfast, use computers, shower, shopping and then we have the afternoon "off" to do whatever else we can think of. It's a hard life you know...

Nicole is desperate for new sunglasses. Obviously this pair looks funny but will NEVER make it.

I remember Tandy used to be a world wide chain of electronics shops. Now they apear to be only in Australia and I believe in Asia too.

I read the paper while Nicole went on a shopping frenzy into Woolies. Her shopping is much more relaxed when I'm not with her coz I am a pushy bastard...

After I spent all afternoon sorting out blog pictures we thought we'd have dinner at Cena, a mediterranean cafe close by. It was rather full but we managed to get a good table at the side where it's nice and quiet.

After Cena we went to Cibo (who makes up these names?!) to get an icecream. Ace (pronounced ah-tsjeh) has to be your choice because nothing beats it. This of course totally depends on your taste.

This is the view over Adelaide from Colonel Light's vision's statue. Colonel Light was the man who designed the old city of Adelaide. He did a very decent job on that by the way. The big lights that you see are the lights from the Adelaide Oval cricket grounds.

As the statue is up a pretty decent hill, the local scouts took blocks of ice and raced down the hill sitting on them. I guess if you can't get snow you just bring your own frozen stuff. pretty cool.

I took this photo especially for Ilse. They put the Christmas tree up last weekend. I remember Nicole, Ilse and I walked around it 3 years ago.

The political change here is incredibly refreshing. Where former Prime Minister John Howard was only taking the country back into the dark ages, the new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed the Kyoto agreement 2 hours after he was sworn in. The deputy Prime Minister (aka vice president) is a woman for the first time ever here and one of the new ministers is not only a woman, not only born asian, but she also has a female partner. I am incredibly pleased with this as gay marriage is unfortunately still not recognised here.

The byebye

Our bedroom at the Murphy-Thoelen residence. We are very thankfull that they were able to accomodate for us so well. It's not easy having your house invaded by 2 people.

It was really nice seeing Birgitte and Maurice again after almost 3 years. We now live in the same country again but unfortunately 2200 kilometres apart so hopping over for coffee is not really an option...

Birgitte and Maurice had a final drink with us at the airport. When you fly domestic (staying within the country) you have so much less stress and hassle. Also Nicole printed our boarding passes from the internet so there was no checking in and we only had hand luggage. Easy going is what I say then.

This big beast landed while waiting. We flew a little 737 ourselves and we had a good flight back. The aircraft was only 60% full so we could sit a bit more comfortable and we were all the way in the back. Prime seats.

The bee sting

A new day, a new plate: "BANNIES". I have no clue.

Breakfast was outside today. As you can see by me wearing the sweater it was somewhat cool outside. It does cool down a fair bit in Perth, more than in Adelaide.

The dreamteam behind their house.

The dreamteam infront of their house.

After breakfast we took a walk to another view spot.

Birgitte under the shade of a tree. it makes a very nice picture I think.

When the water is low you can walk a fair bit into he river in Perth. As you can see I was walking barefoot, until I stepped on a poor little bee that had washed ashore. This was not a pleasant experience, both for me and mr. bee. Luckily the stinger wasn't stuck in my foot but for about 5 minutes it felt like a firecracker had exploded right underneath my foot. (You wonder how I know what that feels like? ;-P )

Nicole posing pretty.

In town on Sunday there were a lot of hot rods and custom cars driving around. This was the coolest one.

This one ain't bad either though...

Earlier that day I had bought myself a proper hat. I look like an explorer now but it's very nice. At least it keeps the sun off my neck, ears and nose.

Nicole now has my old hat ;-)

Ladies and gentlemen: The hatties!

Birgitte posing all pretty. I reckon she found a kilo of sand in her ear that night as it was very windy.

Later on we had drinks at a cafe just behind the dunes. it was wonderfull there with a beautifull view.