A little bit famous

I checked the traffic to my blog and found out that Bolletje has made me a little bit more famous. At the moment I'm still mentioned on their home page (at the bottom though). Here is a direct link to the famous-making post. And this is a screenshot just for the record:

Welcome to Cocky village

Today was the day. We were going to move the birds into their bigger, better, friendlier, nicer, prettier cages. As much as I hate animals in cages, if they have to be in a cage anyway, then let it be a good cage. So there we go, trying to get the little Galah (aka "Cocky boy") in to his new home. It worked like shit. He stayed in his cage, trying his very best to bite a hole in the blanket. I like animals with character :-)

After an hour or so we tried the push and shove approach. 2 little sticks and a bit of guidance did the trick and there he is in his new house. It is a HUGE improvement. He seems to like it and moves around a fair bit which is very good for him.

Cocky boy. He's between 35-40 years old but he's still got a lot of life in him but his condition could be better. He's a real funny bird though. He talks (a lot!) and he loves to be petted.

Having learned from the previous approach we used the same tactics with the sulphur crested cockatoo (we call her "cocky girl"). It worked well and we had her in her new cage within 15 minutes. It was a relief to see everything go so smooth. Especially the cocky girl is always very scared.

Cocky girl. Estimated at 17 years of age and she accepts petting ONLY from Tony, Nicole's father. But it could be that other people are too scared to try petting her. I can get close to her face while holding a almond. She'll take it out of my hand and drop it.

We now have 2 cocky-houses in "Cocky village".

The two neighbours. I hit my head three times, hit my thumb twice until it bled and dug a hole in the same thumb with a wood saw. It was not a good DIY day but the result is fantastic. They eat and drink and walk around. They seem quite happy with their new place.

Mission accomplished. If you want to see how I made the roofs, click here.

After all this we went shopping. First to the Italian deli...

... and then to Woolworths.

And now I'm tired.

The Nicole Mobile Blog 1000th anniversary

Today at work I found the hidden fridge in the board room. Can you see it?

There it is!

And there is the fungi that lives inside!

After work Nicole picked me up to go to her work for drinks. It was nice to see her office from the inside.

Today the Nicole Mobile Blog reaches it's 1000th post! That's a lot of posts. Go have a look and enjoy three years of daily photo's :-)

More veggies

I wanted a Thai lunch but with some bigger variety of vegetables. It didn't taste as nice as the beef long bean but it was alright.

The building across the street on a slightly different angle than last time I photographed it.

The weather was crap.

So is our state of decoration in the office...

When I came home I worked on the bird cages some more. I made another branch and I finished painting the roofs.

Nicole was baking two cakes for at her work. I'm not getting any :-(

Out of pictures error

I forgot to make pictures today. I tell you what my day looked like though.

7:15 - Got out of bed
7:20 - Bio break
7:25 - Get dressed
7:30 - Make and eat breakfast and check email
7:45 - Go to work
8:05 - Start computer at work
8:10 - Start working
9:30 - BIG bio break
10:00 - Got a cuppa Joe
11:00 - Bio break
12:30 - Go out and get lunch (Ham+cheese+pesto baguette today)
12:40 - Eat lunch at office
13:00 - Go back to work
13:30 - Bio break
15:30 - Another cuppa Joe
16:30 - Bio break
18:00 - Leave work
18:10 - Got picked up by Nicole
18:30 - Got home
18:31 - Fed the birds
18:45 - Put the birdcage roofs ready for Nicole to paint them
19:00 - Made dinner
19:05 - Ate dinner while watching an episode of Family guy
19:30 - Walked outside to see how the painting was going
19:33 - Bio break
19:35 - Did the dishes
19:50 - Checked out branches for the second bird cage
20:10 - Sat down behind computer and checked email
20:15 - Started blog


Kinda just like in The NL but then 7.5 hours earlier :-)

My driving lesson car

I had another 'official' lesson. This time at 8AM. Everything went well. I did a reverse parallel park, 90 degree angle park, U-turn and another 3-point turn. All good. It would be nice if I could remember to push the hand brake ALL the way down when driving off instead of two thirds down though...

The bus driving me home was different than usual. I had a clear view without bars in front of me. Seeing the other traffic makes me sometimes wonder if driving tests here have any effect at all.

The emergency

In the morning the fire alarm went off. Stupid fire alarm. Then a voice came on telling us to stay put and that they were going to investigate the cause. This in particular is an improvement because that way the building doesn't get cleared when some dick upstairs is making toasties again.

However, two minutes later the voice came back on telling us to get the fuck out because there was an emergency. I'm not sure how I feel about this business because I could've been killed by the emergency in those two minutes. You know? What if God-bloody-zilla is tearing the place apart or something?

Btw, in the picture are my colleagues (left to right) Melvin, Buddy, Steve, Dale, Mark and Hoang. Including myself there were seven people with a total of five first generation nationalities. I think that's very cool.

Anyway, we leisurely strolled downstairs and walked to the assembly point. Well, that's what we thought. Actually we walked completely the wrong way where no one would come warn us for anything. Including to let us know if it was just a drill...
After 15 minutes in the sun we thought it was enough. We didn't see any smoke and also the fire services didn't show up so we walked back. At least we learned where the assembly point is because it was mentioned on a big fat sticker right next to the door we all walked out through. We saw it when we came back.. Giggity giggity goo.

After work I walked to P.J. O'Brien's. Before crossing the street I had a clear view in to Rundle Street.

At P.J's they were showing the Olympics on the big screen.

And there were flags on the bar. I sat down under the Dutch one. Next to the Dutch flag was the Croatian and next to that the Irish. Good stuff.

Nicole during our session of fine dining.


And last but not least! I've been wanting to put this up for a while but I kept forgetting. It's a fantastic video of Bert and Ernie doing some dope gangsta rappin':

Running in to B.A. Baracus

I played World of Warcraft again this weekend. I don't play that often anymore. The evenings are short because we go to bed earlier and I'm doing my blog every day. So it's a bit of a luxury now. At least it doesn't get boring.

Then in the afternoon we worked on the cages again. I put more branches in so the bird can walk all the way from the bottom to the top.

In the afternoon we went shopping at Woolies.
B.A. was threatening me to buy the new Snickers, which we did promptly.

Peanut butter here stinks. They have three kinds basically: Smooth, chunky and super chunky. But really 'chunky' is smooth with a few pieces of nuts in it. And 'Super chunky' is smooth with more pieces of nuts in it. And it looks like diarrhoea and it needs more salt and less sugar. I WANT CALVÉ PINDAKAAS!

Nicole modelling the bird seed.