Monday, October 20, 2008

Guinness is good for you!

A company called "Vermeer" (that's Dutch) was drilling a new pipe in to the ground at Victoria square.

Because of this I sat on the other side. I think also because of this the fountain was turned off.

View up King William Street.

After work I went to chu.... naaaaahhh. I went to the PUB!

On the way there (Karin, are you paying attention?!) I spotted another golden Toyota Corolla with spoiler even.

Now that we have daylight savings it's light enough for even my camera (phone) to take photo's inside the pub. Even though they make it look like it's the middle of winter.

I had a pint of Guinness for a change. I was starting to get withdrawal symptoms. Not good. Guess who's going to be smelly tomorrow? ;-P

Nic checking the menu. At P.J's they make amazing bruschettas. Just delicious. It's a small piece of toasted bread with a TON of tomato on it and cheese and basil and olive oil. I don't even like tomato usually but this is simply fantastic.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

The tennis season has started

Not a lot happened today. This was the best thing by far. Steve and I played one set of tennis which I won by 6-3. It was good to be doing some sport again. I'm feeling a few forgotten muscles now ;-)

Apart from this I did some studying and Nic and I went for a drive early evening. Back to slavery again tomorrow.

Didn't see any sharks today.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Swimming with Sharks

Two doves in our garden recently became parents. Their eggs hatched a few days ago and their babies are already quite big and their eyes have opened too.

Here's mum or dad (can YOU tell the difference?!) who came back for some feeding. During the day they don't really sit on the nest anymore. It's very warm so they babies won't get cold.

We went to the post office to post stuff and pay bills.

It was a very warm day (27C inside our flat!) and in the evening I just wanted to swim in the sea. I just had to. It was calling me :-)

Right. I was going to write about a fin that we saw in the distance. About twice as far away from the beach as I was. It was definitely not the dolphins but we didn't think it was a shark either. They spotted a great white last week but that would've been gone by now and you don't get many great white's here.

So out of curiosity I check the news and guess what?

It was a f*cking shark. And not a toy shark either. Actually even bigger than the one we had last week aparently. It must've been about 100 metres away from me. Check the story in our quality news paper or look at more photos.

It also explains why we saw a speed boat racing towards the area where we saw the shark. Probably police or something. The scary thing is that there was also a guy on a jet-ski that we couldn't find anymore when we left.

Scary.

Friday, October 17, 2008

WTF?

I just happened to come across this picture. If anybody can PLEASE explain to me what the f@*k is going on here that would be much appreciated.

We have sun

Guess...

Someone dumped 500 kilos of bread in the park. I think all the pigeons in 1 square mile must have come over for the party.

Speaking of pigeons, the one featured in yesterday's blog got buried at the crack of dawn today. It indeed died before we went to bed last night, in peace, under the tree.

For some reason there were TV crews around the place. This one is from ABC.

It may have had to do with this bunch of people. I have no idea what it was about. I heard something about poverty...

After work I waited for Nicole outside at Victoria square and spotted another one of her ads driving past.

We drove down to Henley beach to get some Thai food.

The ground floor of the building in the distance houses the Thai Orchid, our new favourite Thai restaurant as of late.

This is the view from there.

After dinner we walked up the jetty and we saw this dude going for a swim with his two dogs.

The beach was actually quite busy. Funnily enough I was saying to a colleague this afternoon how few people there are at the beaches here usually. I think this is the second time I jinxed myself this week.

Looking down the jetty.

Looking to the North.

Sunset.

The railing of the jetty is worn by ropes from fishermen pulling in their crab nets.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Farewell Mr/Ms pigeon

Lunchtime was spent at Victoria square again. Just because it's awesome. It's sunny, warm, dry and peaceful. And the sound of the water is soothing, it makes you calm and relaxed. I ate a baguette with salami and I had a bottle of Nippy's orange juice.

When the benches are full, people plonk down in the grass. Under a tree, nice in the shade.

At home we've had a bit of a drama since the beginning of the week. Last Sunday this pigeon all of the sudden showed up with a broken leg. It managed to hop around on one leg the first few days but as of yesterday it was officially going down hill rapidly. When I came home it sat under or near the apricot tree and I gave it a bowl of water but he/she didn't want any. We went to the beach tonight to breathe some fresh sea-air and when we came back I checked and I think there's no life in it any more. I'm not a big fan of the pigeons in our garden coz they shit all over the place but I am still sad for this one. I hope it will reincarnate in to something nice.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Defeated by 250 years of experience...

After yet another productive but unplanned (and hence we're not happy with it) day at the office I took the bus down to Modbury around 17:00. I had never been on this one before which I liked a lot. I love riding on public transport.

This ride was especially cool because it drove over the O-bahn (why is this named in German?!?). The O-bahn is a stretch of road where only special equipped busses can drive. The driver just needs to operate gas and brakes, the steering is done automatically. Even better is that at most stretches the bus is allowed 80 or even 100 km/h.

The ride only took about 25 minutes and took me all the way to the other side of town. Super quick,
After only a five minute walk I reached the bowls club. Deceased members with a special status seem to get an entry or a green named after them. Not uncommon.

I got there early and waited for Nicole who maaged to flee work in time for dinner which we had at the bowls club. The day-time players were just rounding up.

Our team played a team of four older ladies. Old(er) but good. This is me with the ladies' team skipper. The 'skip' is the last one to bowl and usually it's the best bowler. However, we choose to rotate positions so that we all can experience different pieces of the action.

It was tough bowling against these ladies. I reckon there was about 250 years of total experience in their team. Neither team made many points and even though we came back pretty good in the second set of eight ends we lost by 12-9.

Well done ladies.

Afterwards we had some lucky draws. The most entertaining part was the microphone that kept cutting out. Here you see the four ladies against we played.

This is the free newspaper available. I guess they know what age group to target.