The farewell lunch (Star Trek High Five!).

Do I look tired? That's because I was fucking tired. And I wanted kwoffee.

Touch down.

We went to the airport at 06:45 to pick up Nicole's parents who were coming back from vacation. This is their Air Malaysia flight touching down. The landing looked very gracious.

Wog fest 2009. Naturally, because I wanted to make a photo of them arriving, some unknown force in the bloody universe decided to plant 3 families in my line of sight.

The in-laws. Tony and Vicky.

This is my international drivers license with which I can drive a car anywhere in the world for a year. I dunno, it could also be a WWII pass of some sort...

Today we had our farewell lunch at Uleybury. Here we see Greg, Gianna and Nicole.

Stephen, Anna and Greg.

Karin and Stephen.

A particularly good photo (if not the nicest ever!) of natalie and Luke (who actually drove two hours to be there!). Thanks so much for coming guys!

STAR TREK HIGH FIVE!

A bit of after chit chat in the parking lot.

We drove home the scenic way, through the Adelaide hills. Everything was still very green. Pretty soon it will be dry and brown again.

We past a hot rod with a dog in it.

While going home we decided to hit the beach. We went to Largs.

Larg's jetty.

Largs beach.

People fishing at the top of the jetty.

A seagull on a pole.

Do I still look tired? That's because I still was bloody tired.

Me! me! me! ME! mE! ME! me! ME!

The didgeridoo

This morning we went to Scoozi's for breakfast together with Karin and Gavin.

Nicole and Marisa.

After breakfast we walked the Rundle Market.

One of the old houses of Rundle Street.

Nicole and Marisa checking out wheat bags.

An Adelaide phone booth.

On the way back to the car I had a quick pit stop at the Best poffertjes stand of Adelaide.

Beautiful Adelaide architecture while walking in to the parking garage.

We drove in to the Adelaide hills next.

Can't go in to the hills without visiting Chocolate @ No 5. This is the tree in front.

Marisa and Nicole ordering inside.

Driving further towards Adelaide again we stopped to admire the view.

Winding roads down the hills.

Watch out for Echidnas.

In Hahndorf I bought a didgeridoo. It's created and painted by aboriginal people in the North of Australia in a traditional way which is hollowed out by termites, cut, and finished.

I am now practising circular breathing and I've already made a bit of progress. Maybe I can join the session in Mulligans with it when I come over ;-)

In the evening we took Marisa to Cafe de Vili's for some quality Adelaide fine dining.

Some things you just have to find out for yourself...

January 26th is "Australia day" here. For now anyway. It will hopefully be moved to another day in the future but that doesn't matter for now.

On Australia day, there is always a cricket match in the Adelaide Oval where Australia's team plays another country, in this case South Africa.

We went.

First we had to wake up and rush to the stadium to get what apparently were the best seats. The atmosphere was good.

Nicole and Gavin waiting in anticipation for the gates to open.

We were not alone.

At first our seats (actually we brought our own chairs because we sat on a grass hill but that's OK) were in the shade.

But the sun came closer quickly and soon we were in full sun light. If you've been to Australia you know that you really shouldn't be doing that.

Then the match started. The type of match played today was of the type where each team had to bowl 50 overs which equals 300 bowls (throws) each. That's 600 in total.

Lots of other crazy people.

I couldn't focus on the game at all. There were too many very loud people, some more drunk and noisy than others, with different sources of loud music (fantastic) and the sun was so hot that it was almost the only thing I could think about from noon till we left. I went outside of the arena a few times to find shade. Once I attempted reading a book under the tree but my legs kept falling asleep. And also I just couldn't stop sweating, even my legs just sweated continuously.

We left after half time. The shade was just coming over our chairs again but we had enough. At least I tried it. If I were ever to go again, I'd buy a ticket for an area with shade and peace so that I can actually try and follow the game. I don't think this will ever happen though.

At first I thought it was a wasted day. But then I thought there were also two nice things:
1) I bought very nice samosas with chilli sauce. They were delicious. I wasn't expecting to find nice food like that.
2) I got to meet Emma again and her boy friend Jason for the first time and he turned out to be a nice bloke.

I think I'll pass on next year's Australia day cricket match.

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.