The birthday / The driver's license

Yes my friends. Today, I got my driver's license. The King can now legally (with minor restrictions for 2 years) drive his own ass around town without guidance.

I kept my test a secret because I didn't want extra pressure. Being 35, I feel more pressured than if I would be 17. Call me silly, I don't care :-P

The above picture shows me and my instructor, Chris Fisher (also Olympic runner for Australia in Munich, 1972). Thanks Chris!

This is what I need to display now. Bye bye L, hello P.

I scored 90 points out of 100. I lost 8 points because the examiner didn't see me look in the rear-view mirror enough. I'll not argue this but I have doubts as to how well he can actually judge that. If it wasn't for this I'd have 98/100. He said that apart from the rear-view mirror thing I was totally a very good driver.

For lunch and birthday celebrations Nicole and I went to the Uleybury winery again. The view from their parking.

The food here is of exceptional quality. This is our starter. The prosciutto was so fresh and soft it felt like having fluffy wool between your fingers. The Rosé wine was excellent.

I told them it was my birthday. Apart from the fact that my wine was free, while nibbling away on our little platter all of the sudden all three adorable waitresses on duty showed up holding a sliced sausage (traditional Italian and freshly made by main waitress' father) with a candle in it and they sang me "Happy birthday". We were so stunned that we forgot to take pictures. It was just the nicest thing they did. We only started remembering making pictures again once half the sausage was gone...

This was the view during our lunch.

These lovely people are Salvatore, Natalie and their brother who's name I don't know but who makes THE best pizza's in the world. They run the place together with their mum(English) and dad(Italian).

And this is the cellar door. A "cellar door" is a place where you can taste and buy wine.

It was a fantastic day. Thanks to Nicole who thought of going there and the people at Uleybury I had a most memorable birthday.

And in the evening I Skyped with my parents for the obligatory birthday chat. It was nice talking with them again.

The bus home

I got a pretty good seat in the bus today. For the first time also a seat where I could open the window.

So I could stick my phone outside and photograph the masses entering my bus.

And buildings too.

This is the Adelaide Festival Theatre. Not that it matters. But it is.

And this is the card that Stephen, Caroline and Lachlan send me for my birthday. Thanks guys! :-)

The letter from Alie

Standing behind a car-truck on our way to work.

This is the branch I cut from the plum tree. There are "things" hanging off of the bottom that "could" be roots but I'm not sure. Time will tell.

We received a four pages, hand written letter from our Friend Alie in Amsterdam. Can someone please tell her a BIG THANKS from Nicole and me?

Rubbish

I've been wanting to photograph this since the first time I had seen it.

I think it's cool.

The Fake Fire Brigade

The day started with a lot of fake action. There was another fake fire across the street when Nicole dropped me off. Pretty soon I think they'll start sending the fake fire brigade. I would.

Beef long bean. Yeah!

Me. Yeah!

Sun. Yeah!

The Fruit

Walking around for lunch I passed the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. I had seen their buildings before and they are surrounded by the same secrecy as the free masons etc. I did some searching online and found out that all they are is a bunch of people agreeing that there is more than just the "earthly" stuff and that they have two weekly meetings where they discuss things they find important in an atmosphere where everybody is equal and everybody gets the same respect. But it's for men only. Women have their own fraterblah organisation. In The Netherlands I found this website. In internet backwater Australia I couldn't find websites so English speakers will have to do with this wikipedia link.

City side street.

I was on a mission to buy new fruit for our fruit bowl at work. I went to the Woolworths in Rundle Mall.

I found my target and loaded up.

The result back at work, a beautiful fruit bowl full of nice fruit.

After work it was Monday-night=P.J. O'Brien's cider-night again! The daylight stays a lot longer now and it's so much more enjoyable to walk there now.

When I walked towards the entrance I passed a pisshead outside who mumbled something "you" and "the Matrix" at me. I was wearing my brown long coat and green sunglasses. Funny. So I go in and find about 20 more pissheads all over the place being VERY loud. I sit down and order my cider. While I take my first sip, pisshead nr. one found me and sat next to me. He must've thought I was Keanu Reeves.

He wanted the obligatory tough guys handshake (I hate it, I like a normal handshake as a greeting and that's it. I'm not impressed with that blokey handshaking at all) and then started to talk to me. I told him I was Dutch and he was VERY quick reminding me of the aussies beating Holland 2-1 last weekend. Thankfully I reminded him of who Australia's couch du jour (Pim Verbeek I believe) is and told him "See, Holland won after all).

I informed with the bar staff if they thought those guys were leaving soon. They replied with "Yes, because we just cut them off". Excellent, I thought. However they kept hanging around and whining for more beer. One guy started to get a little unfriendly so the barman called the coppers. By the time they arrived they were all outside already because their transport had arrived. The nice quietness of the Monday night had returned.

guys from the Munno Para soccer club celebrating whatever. They were completely off their faces and staff had just decided to cut them off.

The day after the show

The day started very rough for both of us but I improved a lot quicker than Nicole. I think we got sunstroked a little yesterday which made us both wake up with a bad head ache and Nicole was close to vomiting. Vicky advised black coffee with a few drops of lemon juice. It actually caused a significant decline in pain which was good.

And then we skip about 7 hours and we're making ourselves pizza. Nicole had almost 100% recovered by then. The pizza was based on Lebanese flat bread. Put some tomato paste on it and cheese, ham and salami. Some herbs and there you go.

Do you like our sophisticated pizza oven?

The result, a very, very, very nice pizza!

I cut a branch of our Satsuma plum tree. I want to find out if this will get roots like this.

The apricot tree is all of a sudden exploding with flowers.

And so is the little orange tree.

Towards the evening we sat outside on the veranda again, enjoying the sun and the arrived warmer weather.

It was nice to spend a whole day at home for a change.