Loads and loads of people

Around four in the morning I was woken up by sounds on the little roof above our window. It was the sound of falling plums and rustling of leaves. I fell asleep again.

When I woke up and walked outside I found this half a metre away from our door. Some little animal went to the toilet right in front of our door! The nerve!

Using my aboriginal tracking skills, I found this plum-pit, 40 cm away from the faeces. It must have had a feast because the tree is currently FULL of plums. It explains the kaka coz eating lots of plums gives you the shits :-)

We went to Rundle mall to look for several things. It was mad busy because the after CHRISTmas sale has started. Most shops have pretty nice discounts. I took lots of photo's of people.

















I wanted to buy a coffee maker for my work. They bought a $700 espresso maker that requires a lot of maintenance. Too much maintenance really. It requires a BIG clean-up right now, or actually it needed it 6 weeks ago and as a result it's now leaking coffee-goo daily. But all the people using that machine are too busy so it's far from getting cleaned. It's just too complicated, you have to be half an engineer to clean the damn thing. And there is nothing about that machine that justifies the price. Most of all the coffee is NOT particularly good. So yeah, I looked at this one in the picture.

But this is the one I bought. It's the one next to the water cooler mind you. It's nice and simple. Also it can make lots of cups at once which is handy for when you get clients over.

Walking towards our car again we saw this aboriginal man playing the didgeridoo. It sounded fantastic. We gave him $5.

Crossing the lights was a circus. This is the left side where we walked.

There were also a few people on the right side crossing...

Out of it

This morning we drove to the Coriole winery in McLaren Vale.

They have a very big Mulberry tree.

It's good that I have photos because I'm so out of it today that I can't remember much about it anymore.

Merry Christmas, dear reader.

After a lot of research online last night I found a way to create a Windows XP setup out of an existing installation of Windows. Interested geeks (Gerrit, Kees and Mic, are you paying attention? ;-) can read more on this on my Creative blog.

Traditionally lots of people have a bbq on Christmas day. So did we.

But for the first time we sat in the garden under the big apple tree instead of in the kitchen. Lots better I think. It was very nice.

Mason also got some Christmas extras.

Nicole found a little spider in a cup she got from the cupboard. It was small (it was bigger than what this photo shows though) but it had 3mm long fangs so we treated it with respect and put it back in the garden far away from our flat.

The pigeons have fights sometimes. I had never seen that until I came here. They basically hit each other with their wings. They can not do any serious damage like that but they hit each other frantically for about five minutes.

I was giving the doves some Christmas food as well. Of course Mason runs to you immediately when you squat like this but once positioned properly he's a good boy.

Christmas nibbles and drinks

I got breakfast at the Cibo where Nicole dropped me off today. She already had the day off. I was still working.

This is my colleague Melvin showing his Santa hat. It looks great! ;-)

I went to Victoria square for lunch. There were two French girls very busy taking pictures of mostly each other in front of the gigantic Christmas tree. At some point they wanted pictures of them jumping in the air. One girl only took two attempts to get it right but the other one took nearly 30 jumps before they had a good picture of it! It was funny to watch.

In the afternoon we had some nibbles and drinks. We were given a bottle of red wine and some chocolates and my boss (Justin) held a very little speech. Everything is going very well for us so everybody is happy. Mohit, on the right, definitely looks very happy.

Here we see Melvin, Mark and Craig.

And this are Luke and Buddy.

The new Eee PC 1000H

I went out to look for a little Netbook today. Although my seven year old Compaq notebook is in good condition it's getting a tad slow (esp. since it only has usb 1.1) and it's also rather bulky. So I went to Harvey Norman, one of Australia's electronics stores.

I found the netbooks alright and had a look. Netbooks are downsized (in size AND features) notebooks or laptops. The one I was after has 3 x usb2, 1GB ram, 160GB hd, 1.6GHz Intel Atom cpu, a build in 1.3mp webcam, WiFi, blueTooth, Ethernet and a 10" widescreen that can display 1024x600. You can also attach a separate screen.

There it is, $799. That's a bit steep. I've seen it cheaper.
I never haggled before but I just thought I'd give it a try. When the salesman approached me and asked if he could help me I told him "yeah, I like this netbook a lot. If you can sell it to me for $699 I'll pay cash and take one home right now". He of course needed to discuss this with a superior. It was mad busy, the rush before Christmas. He came back and said the lowest price he could get me was $719 which we agreed upon. Not bad for a first haggle attempt.

I was going down, still loads more people going up...

Outside a fire truck was parked for a while. I think the driver was having lunch.

After work we went to the Thai Orchid in Henley to celebrate Nic's start of her holiday.

Our cactus still has flowers. They look cool, kinda alien.

This is my new netbook after I unpacked it at home. It's now happily charging it's battery.

The choir

Today two colleagues and I went to demo software that we had been working on. We did this at the client (one of Australia's biggest oil/gas companies). This was the reason we busted our asses off the last couple of weeks. It paid off. The meeting went well. We have a little less pressure now.

I spotted this plate while driving to work.

I spotted this choir singing Christmas songs in Rundle mall when walking from work to PJ's.

I was close to your house, Luke! :-)

Nicole watching a documentary about Dominick Dunne. A writer for Vanity Fair.

I walked around the garden early morning, avoiding my computer. There was a pigeon sitting on this roof 0.4 second before I snapped.

This little dovie is sitting on two little babies. Apparently they hatched two days ago.

Water barrels in our garden.

The apricot tree.

It's bearing quite some apricots at the moment and they taste quite good.

I discovered little pots with dirt too. There should be some kind of sunflower growing out of them I believe.

These bastards shit in our garden and they make a hell of a lot of noise on the little plastic roof above our window. And also on the flat's roof. When they walk on any of these they sound like bloody Godzilla. Trust me, I'm not kidding. They are the most lead-footed animal I know.

I took a nap and when I woke up the Mase had magically appeared in our garden. I hadn't seen him for a while and he was pretty happy to see me. Sitting still for a photo is not his style.

He never hesitates showing his affection for the people he likes and he continually wants to interact with you. That's what doggies do, you know. That's how they operate. They are pack animals. We are in the same pack. That's why he'll follow you around. Because in the pack you sleep, eat, play and explore together.

Late morning we drove down to Noarlunga.

They got some kick-ass beaches there.

Their jetty ends on a small reef.

There was also a lookout-point we went to first.

Then we walked on the jetty. The water was crystal clear.

It's great for snorkling. There are lots of little fishies too.

Most people seemed to hang around the jetty. There were parts of the beach within 100 metres where there was not a soul to be seen. You could set up a little tent and hang out there all day long and have your own bit of beach.

This is the reef at the end of the jetty.

You gotta be a bit careful because sharks get spotted more and more often these days.

After Noarlunga we drove to Hahndorf for a coffee. When we left, the road was EMPTY. For almost three minutes. Unreal.