Australia Trip 2010 - Take 2

Now that you have some more background information I'll continue where I left off earlier...

Thursday August 26th: I woke up at a surprisingly sensible hour given how late I had been out the night before. Liz and I decided to go to Charlestown Square, a shopping centre/mall near my parent's house. We had a look around but couldn't find our way around due to construction. Part of the reason we initially looked into going to Australia was for a wedding, so we had a look at Myer, the department store where the registry was. We got the gift list, and started looking around. Without exaggeration, we looked at about 8 things on the list that we thought we would get and the store had none of them. Getting tired we gave up, hoping we wouldn't offend anyone by giving them money.

We left Charlestown Square and went home for some lunch. Mil called and said he was coming around. He swung by and took us for a drive over to his new house. It's a cool house - the pizza oven that he and Terri (his wife) have built out the back rocks. We then went for a drive into Newcastle, checking out what has and has not changed. Later we went back to Warners Bay, which is a suburb near Valentine and hung out at a cafe. The service there was terrible, but Jonathan and Terri warned us that it would be. It was bad enough that if it had been in the US I would have considered not tipping, or tipped very little. They invited us to a Teppanyaki bar for dinner, but we were really tired by that stage. It was lucky we didn't say yes for 2 reasons: 1) We passed out early, and 2) The Teppanyaki bar was closed because they couldn't light their grills.

Friday August 27th: This was Liz' birthday. Even though our airfare was our brithday and Christmas presents from my parents, they got Liz something that warrants a special intermission:

You've seen Crocodile Dundee - "That's not a knife. This is a knife.", but more appropriate in this context is The Simpsons: "That's not a knife, that's a spoon." Well, the people who make this product must have been sick of being caught out playing knifey spoony, and wanted to cover all their bases. These, are Splayds.

Splayds are the best of 3 worlds. Forget a spork - they're not multipurpose enough. The splayd combines a fork, spoon (ie a spork) AND a knife. They are useful for eating all kinds of things with just one utensil; our typical use for them so far has been eggs. I hear people asking "Could a splayd's knife really be of any real use?" and the answer to that is "Well, the morning Liz got them I cut myself on it." Sure, it's me, and if anyone was going to find a way to cut themselves on a splayd it would be me, but it should be a lesson to everyone - don't run your fingers over a splayd. Sure, it was only a small cut, but it scabbed.

Because of their versatility, you only need to use one utensil with your meal, which means less dishes! These pictures demonstrate the optimal usage of the Splayd:

While this photo demonstrates a waste in efficiency:

And that's the end of our Splayd intermission.

We spent a lot of the day baking cake, and also baking gluten free bread in my parents' bread machine. It came out really well - so well that we made it another 2 times while we were there and well enough for us to be looking into our own bread machine now that we are back in the US.

The plan was to grill some burgers for dinner with some people coming around, but Dad let me know that there were problems with the grill; only 2 burners of the 5 were working properly, so he wanted to clean up the burners that weren't working to see if they would light. He succeeded in getting them to light, which was great, because we ended up using all of the grill space on offer. The grill was a bit greasy, so he cleaned that up as well. With engine degreaser. It wasn't on any of the cooking surfaces, but I'm not sure if that had anything to do with the little flare up under the grill later that night. A whole host of people came over and we ate burgers, salad and stuff like that and later cake.

Some sticker meltiness thanks to the flare-up

Saturday August 28th: Today was the day that the wedding was on. We went out and ran some errands in the morning before I suited up and Liz dressed up (because she wore a dress instead of a suit). Humid and Rach gave us a ride, so that was cool because we could talk to them on the way to the wedding and home. The wedding was good - the ceremony was in a chuch (not a typo, it said so on the invitation) in Cooks Hill, and between ceremony and reception we went and sat at Custom's House with Humid, Rach, Jeef, Jim and Tara. The reception was in a cool old building downtown, and there was plenty of vuvuzela blowing going on. I was surprised by how dead downtown Newcastle was at night, but I've been told that they have changed a lot of the rules as far as drinking and pubs and clubs are concerned in the city at night.

Me suited up and Liz dressed up

I had been talking to Matt earlier in the day about "photobombing". So, while Liz took a shot of Jeef and Matt, Humid and I ran into the background. After the shot was taken Matt turned and asked "Did you just photobomb your own photo?" Yes, yes I did. But I noticed today, when looking at the full photo, that Rach also photobombed behind the tree on the left.

Sunday August 29th: Humid and Rach asked us over for lunch, so Liz and I jumped in the Beast and headed to the other side of the lake. It was my first time driving the Beast since we arrived, so I was very careful with it. They have a really nice apartment, with really good views of the lake. Bibz went as well and we all hung out there for a few hours, - eating, watching soccer on TV and looking at the birds and view outside. It was a very relaxing afternoon.

Monday August 30th: Finding ourselves running out of clothes, Liz and I did some laundry in the morning. Getting towards lunch time Liz and I started heating up some food for lunch, which meant that Dad and Kel also had to work something out for lunch...

One of the foods that is popular in Australia and found almost everywhere but that is not at all common in the US is the meat pie. The meat pie is a prime example of deliciousness: a savory pie bottom and top encase meat, gravy and some times other miscellaneous ingredients, like onions, mushrooms, cheese, bacon or just about anything. Sometimes it is capped with potato instead of a crust top. There's nothing quite like heating up or buying a pie from somewhere and chomping down on it's guaranteed ~20% minimum meat content. It truly is delicious.

On this day Dad and Kel had pies for lunch. Dad must have felt that a pie wouldn't fill him adequately enough, so he made an awesome lunch. He made a pie sandwich.

Recipe for Pie Sandwich:

Ingredients:

• 1x Pie
• 2 x slices of bread
• Optional: tomato sauce, aka ketchup

Instructions:

1. Put a slice of bread on a plate.
2. Place pie on top of piece of bread. Add ketchup if desired.
3. Top with piece of bread. Squish if desired.

PIE SANDWICH!!!

PIE SANDWICH - WITH SAUCE!!!

I was envious of that lunch...

Once everyone had eaten, Liz and I headed to Croudace Bay Park for a walk. Croudace Bay Park is about 2 - 3 minutes drive from my parent's house and is on Lake Macquarie, so you get nice views and it is generally pretty quiet. We took the camera and binoculars with us, because it is also a decent place to see birds. While we were there we saw a Purple Swamphen, Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos, Galahs, Eastern Rosellas, Magpies, Cormorants, and, my favorite of them all, Rainbow Lorikeets. The Lorikeets when we first found them were looking like they were making a nest in a hollow in a tree. They were just hanging out, so we took some photos. After a while we figured we would leave them alone, and went and sat under our favorite tree in the park. Liz gave the tree a hug and we climbed up and sat in it before settling under it. We walked back to the car, stopping at the Lorikeet tree on the way back. We were unhappy to see that some larger galahs were trying to hustle the lorikeets out of their nest. Letting nature take it's course we went home for the evening, cursing those damned galahs.

Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo (Liz took this photo)

Eastern Rosella

Magpie

My favorite: Rainbow Lorikeet. We got lots of photos of them, some perhaps better than this, but this one shows what they look like

The tree Liz and I sit under, and...

... the view from beneath the tree

I'm going to call it a day there. We've got a long walk tomorrow and a long drive the next day. In Australian days, anyway.

Lunch at a hotspot (aka Geek out Thursday)

Recently Mike procured for himself a Motorola Droid™ 2. For some reason he didn't hold out for the special edition Droid™ 2 that is coming out... eh - I think I'd rather have the normal one too. It's an improvement on the Droid™ that I used as a trial and posted about, sporting updated hardware and software. Along with those updates are some new features - one of which is that the phone can be used as a 3G hotspot. For those who aren't sure what that type of thing means, a 3G connection would be what people would use to get data/net traffic and what have you to your phone. The hotspot allows you to share that connection with up to 5, I think, devices.

Lunch yesterday rolled around and Mike was having some fun with the Droid™. He started telling Ivan about the hotspot, so Ivan, who owns an iPhone 4, tried connecting to it. Of course, given that the iPhone 4 has 3G coverage of it's own, there was no real point or benefit to connecting to Mike's to share his. Actually, the point was to see if it could be done and to geek out.

Mike set his phone as a hotspot, naming it "blob". Ivan used the iPhone's Wi-Fi connection to connect to Mike's hotspot. Yep, Ivan, or his iPhone depending on how you look at it, was on the blob. Success! It looked like it was all working, until Ivan tried to browse the web. First page he tried to go to he got a note saying that he had to register or something like that. It turns out that you can connect and set it up, but can't do anything else without paying Verizon, Mike's carrier, some extra money each month.

It may not have fully worked, but we all had a laugh, sitting around geeking out.

IvansiPhone - on the blob.

This still applies: DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license.

Movie Break

I'm going to take a break from the Australia posts for a moment to talk to you all about a movie we saw last night. On the plane we were considering watching a movie. Both of us wanted to watch it, and we had both heard that it was good. The Qantas ratings from both critics and regular viewers seemed to confirm that, so we decided to hold off and make it our grand return to Netflix when we got back. It arrived yesterday, and we watched it last night. The movie we watched: The Ghost Writer.

I'll just straight out say it: I didn't really like the movie. It was watchable I suppose, but I agreed with Liz' comment that we should have watched it on the plane. I used to enjoy the TV show as a kid, and so I was a bit worried by the fact that they had added "The" to the title. But, I figured, Obi-Wan Kenobi, James Bond and the floaty colored ball thing? It's still gotta be good. But then, alas, no colored ball thing to help them with the mystery.

So, keep in mind if you want to watch it: no floaty ball thing, therefore The Ghost Writer ≠ Ghost Writer.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out this YouTube clip that may clear things up.

He's a ghost, and he writes to us. Ghost Writer. Also, Bridge Slippery When Wet = Sheldon Turnipseed as Jamal.

Based on the titles of some of the episodes on TV.com, such as "Who burned Mr Brinker's Store?" they worked on some pretty heavy stuff. I wonder why the arson unit didn't investigate... or if they did, why they couldn't solve it and the Ghostwriter team could... I bet it all comes back to that floaty ball thing...

Australia Trip 2010 - Background Information

I apologize. I probably should have provided some background information before I started doing the posts so that people could put faces to names and have a better idea about who or what I'm describing. So, on that note, here is some background information...

Mum and Dad - well, actually Dad and Mum in this photo

My parents have been married since 1977 and live in Valentine, NSW, Australia. Dad likes to wear repurposed folding chair bags as slings, while Mum likes to walk around and point at things. They're both really good about putting up with my hijinks. For instance, Mum didn't disown me when I slipped a fake lottery ticket in with her Christmas presents a few years ago and made her think that she had won $50,000. Mum prefers the Australian English spelling of her name, "Mum", as opposed to the US English "Mom". Dad's name is spelled the same in both.

Kel

Kel is my brother and he is 2 years younger than me. He has more Facebook friends than my blog has followers. He once ate a massive shank of meat at a local steakhouse. When asked his name to write on the wall, he responded with "Russell Newman". You can see my name/Kel's achievement recognized on the honour roll on the Stetson's website. Kel is as strong as an ox.

From left to right - Andrei, Jeff, Jonathan and Matt (I didn't label myself)

Andrei - a man of many names: Andrei, Onge, Gunge, Humid, the list goes on. Humid is a new name - while I was in Australia I was sending a text message to Matt, and Kel's phone thought I was trying to type "humid" when I was actually trying to type "Gunge".

Jeff - A lot of us normally call Jeff "Jeef". I believe Matt came up with the name a long time ago.

Jonathan - also known as Jonno or Mil.

Matt - also known as Bibz, he and his father own more guitars than everyone else I know put together. No exaggeration.

Rachel and Humid

Rachel is Humid's wife. She does have an identity outside of being Humid's wife, but I'm trying to explain how everyone is linked together. If you want an awesomely funny or disgusting hospital story, Rach is the person to talk to.

Terri

Terri is Mil's wife. Based on all the photos we have, I have to conclude that it is impossible to get a photo with all of Terri's face in it. Just kidding - though this seemed to be the only photo I had of her, so sorry about the quality...

Jeb

You will already recognize Jeb from the earlier post. As well as enjoying Vegemite on toast, Jeb's philosophy on a balanced breakfast includes dry dog food and tea or coffee. He also loves chicken and whatever everyone else is eating.

Bil

Bil is my parents 2010 Subaru Forester. It looks like the picture above, which I took from the Subaru Australia website. Bil is fun to drive - it had been a long time since I had driven a manual/stick car.

The Beast

The Beast is Mum and Dad's second car. It is a 1989 Holden Camira. It doesn't have power steering or central locking, but it gets you from point A to point B. Just be careful how much gas/petrol you use along the way though - the fuel gauge doesn't work.

That should probably give you a solid enough introduction to who everyone and what everything is. If Australians want to add to the descriptions above, feel free to leave a comment...

Australia Trip 2010 - Take 1

The laptop charged tonight, not completely, but at this stage it looks like it has charged enough for me to copy the pictures that were on it. So, I'll start going through the things we did in Australia. We left the US on Sunday August 22nd, which is Monday in Australia. I'll refer to things based on the day it was in Australia from here on, because that makes sense to me.

Monday August 23rd, aka, the flight: We got to JFK with plenty of time to spare, because I like getting to airports with lots of time to spare. We got through security and everything, then within 10 minutes had taken in all the delights that JFK terminal 7 had to offer. It was a boring terminal. The only cool thing that happened was that a little girl knocked over a bottle of duty free perfume and tried to run away before her mother grabbed her by the shoulder. Because it was rainy incoming flights had been delayed, and I believe our plane was late arriving, so they delayed boarding by half an hour. That wasn't that bad, but remember, it's a boring terminal. Eventually they let us on the plane, only to sit there for 2 hours waiting for a backlog of take-offs. Once in the air though they told us the flight time would be about an hour shorter than normal - things were looking up. Then, they brought us an unexpected meal. Before we left, Liz called the airline and told them we couldn't eat gluten or dairy. The only thing they could do that would insure none of those things was fruit platters. So, we ate a fruit platter. I had a window seat, and Liz had the aisle seat. I got up at one stage and went for a walk. When I came back Liz pointed outside. There, the biggest I have ever seen it, was the Big Dipper. It looked awesome. About 30 minutes later, with the Dipper still visible above the cloud line, we saw an electrical storm in the distance. Again, awesome. We watched She's out of my league (was OK) and waited to arrive in LA, getting really tired by this stage because it was past midnight.

When we arrived in LA, we were told that because our flight was so late that people had to get on shuttles and get to the next gate for the second flight. Rushing through the airport we were probably on the ground/out of planes for around 15 - 30 minutes. Liz' brother, Josh, later pointed out that you probably don't need to be in LA longer than that anyway. We took off and watched another movie, Date Night. It was of the level of quality of an airplane movie. We were fed another fruit platter, and then I indulged in about 7 hours sleep, before being woken for another fruit platter. By then I was sick of fruit platters, and couldn't wait to get off the plane to eat something other than fruit and miscellaneous snacks that we had brought on board. The snacks included jerky and snack bars. We had 2 packs of jerky, one was turkey, the other pepperoni. We knew we really liked the pepperoni, so decided to leave it for the return flight. Salvation seemed close, but then about 3 hours out from Sydney jet stream winds started rocking the plane. The rocking didn't really let up until we landed.

Tuesday August 24th: After landing we got off the plane, letting the rush of people run off ahead of us. We put on some cleaner clothes, and Liz tidied herself up. We went through immigration and got to Customs. The guy standing there asked "Do you have any food with you? Fruit, vegetables, beef jerky?" My heart sank when I told him we had jerky. I didn't want to risk lying, those dogs can smell it a mile away. Walking past a sign saying that we may be filmed for a TV show, I made a note to tell them not to include us having our jerky confiscated. Customs looked through our bags and a dog identified the bag with the jerky. Then, they put the jerky back in our bag - to let a dog in training find it. In the process it climbed all over Liz' suitcase, leaving paw prints all over it. When it found the jerky it sat on the bag and waited for a treat. They then took our jerky away for good.

We went out and met my parents, unable to find them at first. Eventually they spotted us and we left the airport, heading to an area of Sydney called Darling Harbour to have some breakfast. After loading up on bacon, eggs and tomato (with Dad also loading up on Liz and my bread) we walked around the harbour for half an hour.

Liz, myself and a random kid in a fountain in Darling Harbour

Dad, Mum, myself and a hobo in Darling Harbour

We then hit the road and headed towards Newcastle, stopping in where my brother, Kel, works on the way to see him. At pretty mych every intersection I was mentally turning onto the wrong side of the road. I resolved to wait at least a day until driving. After hanging out there we went home and showered and everything, then went and got some groceries to get us through the day and next morning. For the rest of the evening we were pretty tired, Liz passed out on the couch before dinner, and I hung out with Jeb.

Wednesday August 25th: We woke up early and headed downstairs in time to not only feed ourselves but to also help feed Jeb. One of the elements of his breakfast is Vegemite on toast. He loves the stuff.

If you tell Jeb "Gently" as you are feeding him, he'll take food from your hand more slowly.

Once we were all fed and dressed Liz, Mum, Dad and I went to Caves Beach, which is our favorite beach, I think, in Newcastle. I drove Dad's car, named Bill, which is a 2010 Subaru Forester with manual (standard) transmission. I didn't go onto the wrong side of the road once. But I did use the wipers a lot instead of indicators. We walked a long length of beach, took some photos and explored some rocks, caves and rock pools.

Liz and I on the beach by some rocks

2 experiments with some new camera filters

An Australian Seagull - they are smaller and less dirty (more bright white) looking than American seagulls

Dad and Mum on rocks

The ocean through one of the smaller caves

After the beach we ate some lunch and got our hair cut. I called some friends that evening and Matt (aka Bibz) and I went out that night and took some night photos. We went to a section of Lake Macquarie called Warners Bay, and took photos on a new bridge that they have built as part of a walking path. We named the section of walkway "Bridge World".

The water at Bridge World kept lapping up against the rocks on the shore, which made me need to hit the bathroom really badly. I ended up getting home at around midnight, running straight for the downstairs bathroom...

I'll take a break there. You're probably already sick of reading all this and looking at the photos... don't worry, only about 16 more days in Australia to read about!

Trying to stay awake

This weekend has been a bit weird in the sleeping stakes - I daresay due to the fact that night time is what was day time for a few weeks. Yesterday we woke up at the somewhat sensible hour of 10 (alarm was set for 9) so that we could return the car we hired to get home from the airport and do the grocery shopping. After some initial fatigue neither of us were tired; I was even OK at 1:30-ish when we eventually went to bed.

Once I was asleep though was when the real weirdness kicked in. I kept having bizarre dreams in which I was injured or killed.

In the first dream Liz and I were walking home and some kids started following us. They followed us all the way home then started banging on our door telling us that they wanted to come in. Eventually they smashed the door in and beat me with bats or something. Then the dream ended.

In the second dream my parents were having some people over for lunch. While we were waiting for people to arrive a riot broke out in front of their house. The house wasn't the one they live in in real life. People started to arrive, then this guy I have never seen before walked in through the door. I was watching the riot from a window and turned when he entered. I didn't recognize him, so I asked him who he was. He answered that his name was Richard Kadum. When I said my parents didn't know anyone named that, he kicked me backwards under a table, pulled out a gun and shot me.

In the third dream I was with someone else, a guy, I don't know who, and we were being chased by a predator, like the ones from the movies. It was night, and we ran into a warehouse to hide. We split up to try and get away, and I hid behind a row of shelves. All of a sudden part of the shelf started to move. I knew then that it was the predator, but it was disguised as a giant bunny! A giant bunny with one droopy ear, no face and a hole in it's head. It then used one of its predator weapons on me.

Artist's (my own) conception of what the Predator-Bunny looked like.

After everything that happened while I was asleep I'm glad I'm awake. But I haven't felt like I've been fully awake today. Hopefully jet-lag is gone soon.

We're back...

Well, we are back from Australia.

The plan is to do some posts in the coming days of things we did while we were there. At the moment though I need to get some photos off the laptop before I start posting. That will need to wait until Monday though, at least, because the laptop still won't charge...