Andrew and Debbie

Canterbury

2009-09-15T21:53:00.007+01:00

Hi everyone,

Well today I went to Canterbury and had a lovely day! Canterbury was taken over by the romans in 1st Century AD and was also bombed in WWII. However, lots of Roman artifacts remain today.....

xoxoDebbs

We are still alive in the UK!!!!

2009-08-16T08:26:00.023+01:00

Hi All,

Well if anyone still reads our blog, you will need to make your self a cup of tea and some scones to read this post!

It's beens so long since we have blogged.......I guess because we weren't doing so much touristy stuff and just living normal life!

To fill you in on our lives - I have stopped studying Uni this semester so that we can put that money towards travelling. I have done really well with my first 2 subjects and have been enjoying learning about Psychology. Only another 22 subjects to go, but hey, I'll get there....eventually!!!!

Andrew's work is going well (no news really on his side)

We will be going to Germany (Hamburg) in 2 weeks time for my work collegues wedding. We can't wait!

I'm organising a trip to Italy for Oct/Nov this year and Andrew will be looking at Austria/Switzerland in Jan/Feb next year.

We are still enjoying it over here and have loved having Amanda and Russell living around the corner from us. We have weekly dinners which are always a lot of fun.

Anyway.....some photos to look at :)

****Us at Bath in April

*** Wine Tasting

Since drinking is a big part of the British culture, we thought that we may have to work on our skills of enjoying a drink. You know....we don't want to seem rude or anything.....
So we have been to a few wine tasting nights to really learn how to appreciate wine. It's been facinating learning this stuff and I must say that we do enjoy a glass every now and then.

*** A day at the seaside - Brighton

No swimming...water was too cold.
P.S. The fish in batter was gross.....vinegar on chips in quite nice though.
P.P S. The pebbles are about 1 meter in depth! I had my thong (flip flop for the Brits) stuck under the pebbles when I was standing at the shore.

***Shakespear's Globe

We went to a performance at Shakespears Globe and saw the classic 'Romeo and Juliet'. We stood for a few hours watching as it only cost £5! It was really good except for the final scene (the death scene). It was so bad, all the actors were aweful which is very surprising as this is the climax to the story. Oh well, it was still enjoyable :)

***Fun with Amanda and Russell

*** London Zoo

We went to check out what the zoo's are like over here....pretty impressive I must say! not as big as Australia Zoo but lots of animals are here that I haven't seen before!

***In June I went to Wimbledon!!!!

It was so cool and it's only 30mins away from where we live. I got out of work early one day and lined up. Russ and Amanda were ahead of me but I couldn't jump the cue as they gave everyone a numbered ticket. So I sat on the grass in an oval listening to my ipod for 70mins. Then the massive line starts to move and I get in for a ground court ticket for £14. I can go to all the courts except Centre, 1 & 2. Amanda and Russ got in earlier than me and were so lucky that a couple that had day tickets to centre court were fed up and going home (not staying for the last match of the day). They gave their tickets to Amanda and Russ and so they went in to Centre court. They then phoned me to say that there were lots of spare seats next to them and that i should come up! so I did. It was magic. We saw an 11th seeded males singles match (2nd round) in centre court all for £14!!!!!! then after that, we went walking around and saw Tim Henman and John McEnroe

**A day out at Holland Park

*** Random things we have done

decorated gingerbread men/ladies

Saw DV on my birthday at southbank. He said the force was strong with me :)

Our lovely friends Jenni and Merela

***Westminster Abbey

We went to an evensong service at Westminster Abbey. The choir sang many songs (most were not that nice) but the sermon was very unexpected. The priest started off by asking us we feel if God put us on hold like British Telecom does to it's customers......it was a short and sweet sermon. Inside is so beautiful but we didn't get a big look around as you are supposed to leave after the service. As we left our seats to head to the door, the pipe organist played this aweful tune.....i felt like I was in a vampire movie or somthing....Andrew said 'Some songs just should not be played'.......

***Ascot Races

Tina (who is my colleague and getting married in Germany) had her hens party at the races....very posh!

***Waiting for Godot??????

Who cares when it stars Patrick Stewark (Professor Xavier - Xmen) and Ian McKellan (Magnito - Xmen)

***A Royal Affair at Buckingham Palace

We went and saw the state rooms in Buckingham Palace and they were so beautiful......Unfortunately I was rushing ahead of my audio guide and missed the secret trap door that is behind a mirror. I couldn't go back because of the crowds :(

Well that brings you up to speed on us......will have some more in 2 weeks time from Hamburg.

xoxoDebbie

PS Andrew won't believe it when I tell him that I've written a post....and what a post it is!

Just some random stuff

2009-03-16T21:09:00.000Z

Went to trafalga square a week or so back and got some nice shots.

our bus running a red light:

an attempt at taking a reflection shot in the tube:

a bunch of people lining up outside hamleys for barbie's 50th birthday:

thought this one was interesting:

Had a birthday dinner with debbie at the moroccan resturant that we like going to (http://www.pasha-restaurant.co.uk/) but debbie was having a "weird mood day".... and insisted on taking photos of everything dispite the romantic atmosphere... and she kept using the flash in this mostly dark resturant with candles on the table!!!

I drew the line at taking shots of me...

and so that put a stop to that for the night thankfully! :-D

except for one cool shot of Glousester road station:

A day in Richmond.

2009-02-28T17:24:00.002Z

This weekend we decided to not be lazy and sleep in to 11 like we normally do. We got up at 8:00 and played a game of squash to start the day off on a good foot. Then we went to have some bacon and eggs and then set off for a day at richmond.

We've been to richmond before, but that was after we had the camera stolen so we couldn't show everyone back home how beautiful the place is. but this time we were prepared. unfortunately there's no real story to tell appart from "we walked arround near the river, then we took photos and walked some more, then we ate lunch and did some more walking before going home." so I'll just let the pictures tell the story mostly.

first up was the Farmers markets, which are on every saturday. it's not a big market but they definately have some excelent smelling cooked food and fresh vegitables that are second to none.

Check this out: nope, this is not trick photography, those mushrooms really are as large as pumkins (and yes, the pumpkins are normal size):

A random assortment of animals found arround the neighborhood:

richmond has a nice old stone bridge which makes for great photos.

to the north of the bridge (the direction the above photo is looking) is a few pubs and lunch places. our favorite is the White Cross, but we'll get back to that later. The boats you see in that photo can be hired out.

First stop was a cup of tea and scone for debbie and a salad for me:

A quick shot of me:

The south side of the bridge is mostly full of (very expensive) residential houses. they say a man's hous is his castle:

Now, as you probably know, I tend to be facinated by the more morbid side of life in London. everywhere you look there graveyards or memorials. every statue is a memorial to a dead person, it just seems to be something that permiates through daily life. One thing that is common in parks and is particularly prevelant in Richmond, are park benches with memorial notes enscribed on them. that's the way I'd like to go. don't give me a hunk of stone that will only get worn away and have moss on it. give me a park bench somewhere for people to sit on.

cheers Bill and Phil!

the tides tend to be quite large here - this footpath is completely covered during high tide.

Saw this and had to take a photo of it. it just appeals to me. Old stonework? check. Moss? check. rusting metal? check. cool angled photo opportunity? check.

We came across our first squirrel in a long time, he (she?) was busy running around looking for food and stuff (come to think of it, what else does a squirrel do?) - it took me about 20 shots to finally get him to stay still in any case.

And the flowers are starting to come back! So debbie had to go pick a dafodill: ahh the joy of spring!

... but then she got immediately distracted by her mobile phone...so I had a conversation with the dafodil all by my self...

Richmond certainly has its share of cool houses:

and debbie finally gets off her phone and triumphantly strides towards me holding the dafodil victoriously in the air.

then we came across the only set of flowers on the entire hill:

but of course that was an absolutely rubbish photo...... We were certain we could do better. so with much mud and grass stains later:

found a cool moss-covered stone gate:

Then got inundated by a bunch of squirrels. and about a billion-gazillion photos later we got these brilliant ones of a grey squirrel:

And these of a red one:

came accross these things:

apparently they're called "loggeries" and are designed to attract Stag Beetles but also support other "specialist insects, Frogs, Toads, Shrews and voles and birds such as Thrushes, Robins and Blackbirds" (or so said the notice strapped to a nearby tree).

yeah well, it happens:

So, by this time I was just about to explode from the need to go to the toilet so we didn't take any photos on the way back to the white cross. but after peeing, we had this delicious lunch:

I never tried cider before comming to England, but I totally understand why it's popular. if you have a heavy meal in a warm pub a cool refreshing cider just tops it off perfectly.

The white cross pub:

this walkway is also covered by water during high tide.

Don't believe me? well...

this is one of the reasons they have the Thames barrier to stop flooding during king tides.

I think this is a cormorant, but am not sure:

sometimes I like taking wide shots, like the following one, but I'm frustrated by the fact that it doesn't capture little things that really make the real life experience. if a picture is a thousand words; being there is ten thousand pictures.

Sometimes I just love looking at people go about their business. in particular I like seeing old people out and about and so the above scene caught my attention, but how could I take that whole picture and then have you skip over the parts that I liked?

Debbie wanted to go to the Odeon cinema to see what was on:

so I agreed, but got distracted by some old mossy stones:

and a monument in a churchyard nearby:

about this stage we were ready for a nap, so a short train ride later and here I am writing this blog while debbie naps.... typical :-). one of these days I'll have to get her to sit down and write one.... or so I keep saying anyway. :-D

Miscelaneous things since the snow.

2009-02-15T00:04:00.002Z

Over the past couple of weeks we've taken a few photos of various things around the place, but not quite enough to make a blog out of.

Last Monday night we went to see the musical Oliver. Rowan Atkinson (mr Bean) played Faigan and did an excellent job. they actually managed to work in some mr beanisms every now and then. Do you remember his teddy bear? that makes an appearance and gets thrown in a fire :-(. overall it was a great musical with excellent acting from the kids. but really everyone was there to see Rowan Atkinson, that's the main reason we were there anyway :-).

So here are some random photos we've taken over the past few weeks.

Debbie looking content after her latte:

My desk at work, complete with a bacon and egg roll and a large latte, stored procedure on the left monitor and error log on the right, what more could a computer geek want?

My Keyboard has a special panic button. I haven't had occasion to use it yet, but it's comforting to know it's there.

This is the view looking toward the Gerkin from immediately outside my building.

A promenade leading towards liverpool street station:

Liverpool Street Station at rush hour:

A skating rink at broadgate circus. Normally this flat area is full of tables and chairs for people to eat their lunch on, but during the winter they stick an open-air ice rink. it's funny seeing business people in suits having a lunch-time skate. This photo was taken at about 5:15pm so no business people unfortunately.

We went to our favorite Chinese place during the Chinese new year celebrations:

Today, (saturday) we went to the Greenwich markets for a bit. It was a really brilliant day. We got up at 11:00am. went to a coffee shop and had bacon and eggs for breakfast, then took the train to Canary wharf where we changed for the DLR. here's Debbie indicating two minutes until the train comes:

By some miracle I managed by accident to take this shot where debbie is focused in the foreground but everything is blurry. I've been trying to do this for ages, mucking around with the aperture and all sorts of camera settings and had all but given up hope, thinking that a more expensive camera was required but somehow this photo turned out brilliantly:

anyway. finally arrived at greenwich markets:

We looked around for a couple of hours and bought a few things, and then on the way back to the train, we saw this cool looking Alleyway:

of course, anyone who loves moss-covered stones and old church-yard (such as myself) could not possibly resist the urge to take a detour down this path, so we did.

Dead vines anyone? hey - I like this sort of thing...

turns out it was basically a churchyard. quite a cool gothic looking church. Debbie and I took these two pictures - I like mine (the first one) better, debbie likes hers (the second). we decided to post both and let you guys decide. (pssst.. note that mine more effectively captures the dark ominous feeling while also managing to reveal the oxidized copper lightning rod descending from the top of the tower. ).

Of course, all churches have church yards, and all churchyards built before the late 1800's were basically designed to accommodate dead people:

hundreds of gravestones lined the path. the vast majority were so old and warn that their inscriptions were completely unreadable, in fact if it weren't for the moss and the centuries of weathering, you'd think that some of the stones hadn't been carved at all. Here is the only one we could read in its entirety:

"BENEATH this stone is deposited the remains of SARAH wife of JOSHUA FOUNTAIN who departed this life October 28th 1790 in the confident hope of Gods mercy and a glorious resurrection. Aged 44 Years. She was a most affectionate, endearing and obedient wife a fond loving yet most prudent mother, a kind neighbour and firm friend. She was the mother of ten children five of which are deceased, two of which Joshua and Elizabeth are buried near this stone. In respect to her memory and virtues this stone is erected by her disconsolate husband."

to put this in perspective: this is the only readable stone we could find, hens I assume it's one of the newer ones. yet she died only three years after the first fleet set sail from England.

There now - I wonder which will last longer; the words engraved on this stone or these words I'm writing on the internet now...

Among these ancient graves, we encountered a special one. They say that death is the great equaliser, that at the end of the game, the king and the pawn both go into the same box. Never has this so hit home to us as in the following picture. As we've seen many times, grave stones get erected and then neglected and then forgotten about. both humans and white goods that have reached the end of their lives are treated equally. This whirlpool gravestone had been worn smooth by the ravages of time and had collapsed forward to lean forlornly against the railings, who knows whether it was a toaster or a microwave that lies buried here. all we know is that someone cared enough to erect this monument in its memory:

(have I mentioned before how much I love graveyard irony?)

after this we stopped for a quick look in a bookstore:

had a quick train ride home:

And finished off our day out by stuffing our faces with coffee and cake and more coffee and another cake and a cup full of cream:

incidentally - we've seen Kung-fu Panda recently - absolutely brilliant - if you like jack black you'll love it.

"Legend tells of a legendary warrior who's kung-fu skills were the stuff of legend!"

everyone together now: "Haiiiiya!"

London Snow!!!!!

2009-02-02T18:20:00.001Z

Well, hello everyone! for once it's not all that long between blog posts!

Last night (1st February) London recieved the most snow it has had in 20 years, and it is predicted to be more of the same tonight, blanketing london in the most snow for nearly 40 years.

here's an excerpt from a newspaper:

"London was brought to a standstill today by the heaviest snowfall in 20 years. Hundreds of thousands of commuters were left stranded as up to 17.5cm of snow fell in just a few hours. and with more snow on the way, the capital will recieve its deepest covering since 1964.

Ever bus was withdrawn from service for the first time in living memory, with experts predicting the icy blast will cost businesses millions of pounds.

the Chaos wreaked by snow included:

Trains from 10 of London's 11 Tube lines cancelled or suspended.
All the city's 6800 busses taken off the roads.
650 flights at heathrow canceled. London City airport closed and gatwick and stansted badly hit by delays.
Hundreds of schools closed.

the blizzards are expected to continue for at least another day, with snow also forecast for thursday and Friday."

Of course you know..... this means this blog post is primarily going to consist of gratuitous snow shots....

I woke up a bit earlier than usual as I intended to get into work for an early start. took one look out the window and went and jumped on debbie to get her up.... "waaahht..?" she said in an annoyed and groggy manner. this was of course an unacceptable attitude on such a brilliant day so I opened the blind and she jumped out of bed instantly, sleepyness forgotton! "SNOWWWW!!!!!!!! AAAHHHHHHH!!!!! QUICK - TAKE A PHOTO!!!"

So we did:

after deciding that debbie should have the camera for the day, I went off to work.

Debbie took the next lot of photos:

This is the snow in the morning down our street before everyone trod it into icy mush.

The snow in the morning (about 6:45am) was very deep (most of it past ankle height) very cool to walk on. hopping out of the tube once reaching the city was another matter entirely. and I discovered the downside of snow.... if you havn't experienced walking to work in the city after heavy snow - you can experience a small bit of what it feels like using the following method:

Take a couple of bags of crushed ice and empty them on the floor, now walk on it without falling over.

I thought snow was all fluffy and light, but after nearly 20cm of it falls and then hundreds of people walk over it to get to work it quickly becomes the consistancy of crushed ice. combine this with business shoes and you get a pretty interesting trip to work:

You know when you go ice-skating; there's always the people who are brilliant, then there's always the newbies who are clutching the rails but then you get an in-between group of people who look like they've done it a couple of times but really aren't entirely comfortable with the whole thing... constantly overballancing and looking like they're going to fall over any second but somehow managing to hold it together? well, without fail, every person walking to work in the city this morning had a gait similar to what I just described.... business people in suits were slipping and sliding all over the place. it was so hilarious I would have normally been laughing out loud, except for the fact that I was too busy trying to concentrate on not falling over myself.

and the roads!!! crossing a road was even worse - icy slipperyness on the footpaths, icy sludge on the roads.....you can't see the normally obvious inconsistancies in the road so you end up stepping in a minor ditch and getting wet socks......

in any case, Debbie took the camera into work and snapped the following beauties:

see the icy sludge here:

debbie's security guard took this photo of her (note the ice and sludge)

This one would have to be my favorite:

It snowed all day. I got into work at about 7:30 or so and while normally there would be about 15 people in the office at this time of day, there was a one person other than me in the office for the next hour. my boss called and that was when I found out that every single bus in London had been taken out of service. apparently they just kept sliding all over the place so they took them off the roads. also found out then that every single line except the northern and victoria lines were mostly suspended.... I guess it was either due to the bits of the trainlines that were not underground.

so anyway, by 10am there were three of us in my team and about 10 people total out of an office of 100 that had managed to get in. my boss called again and said that he was going to try to make it in and would take anyone who was in to lunch.

Lunchtime came and we wisely rang arround to see what places were open. The only one we could find that was close enough to not trudge through ice and sludge for too long was an expensive italian resturant. but our boss promised us lunch so we we had good italian food... with entree.... and wine... and coffee. I think we all just wanted to draw it out so we didn't have to go back to work.

there were 8 of us that made it in to lunch and most of them left immediately after to begin their 3-4hr trip back to their house, for most people it was going to be a lot of walking followed by a delayed train journy. Debbie e-mailed me at about 2pm saying she was going home. I heroicaly stayed until 4pm, at which point my boss patted the three of us remaining on the back and told us "that's enough boys, time to go home". hey, who am I to dissagree with my boss.

here are some shots that debbie took when she got home:

Note the ice!!!

We had an attempt at making snowmen... the one on the left is my "snow sculpture"

mmm, sludgy goodness

That's all for now folks!

We're Back! and with Photos!

2009-01-10T16:12:00.002Z

We're back!

Quite a few things have happened since last post - the most significant of which is we bought a camera! so we immediatly took photos of where we live:

It really is quite cool living above a pub.

Debbie has started studying a psychology degree at the University of Southern Queensland via distance education, and has had to learn a bit of study discipline, something she's not had to do before. University is not something that she can leave until the last minute and finish the assignments the day before they're due like she did in High-school. so after slacking off for a bit last year she proceded to give herself a migrane trying to catch up. oh well, we live and learn don't we.

Studying hard:

We finally got back our insurance claim money also - we had the best possible outcome, including payment for things that we didn't expect - such as the expensive purfume that debbie had but didn't have any proof of ownership etc. We havn't replaced everything yet, but as Debbie was going to start studying we bought a cheap laptop, which I'm typing this on due to debbie hogging the "big" computer.

Lacking foresight, I didn't buy Microsoft Word with this one, thinking that openoffice would be fine, but it turns out that there some very small compatibility issues between the two, and seeing as debbie must have her assignments produced in the exactly correct format she's had to use Word to be sure.

As you can see, We've also bought a camera - it's fairly cheap but it has ended up being better quality than our last one due to the continuous march forward of this type of technology. quite cool.

In my spare time I've been learning software Reverse Engineering, with a focus on malware analysis. This has been interesting - it's caused me to be seen as this hard-core technology guy, and I try to play it down in conversations, particularly if the person I'm talking to doesn't understand this sort of stuff.

Them: "so what do you do for a living?"
Me: "I'm a database programmer"
Them: "oh....."
me: "yeah - it's pretty cool"
Them: "got any hobbies"
Me: "yeah - I Reverse engineer software for fun. I really like taking apart viruses to see how they work and figuring out which vulnerabilities they exploit and seeing how to defend against them"
Them: "oh.....uhm.. look I really need to go - it was nice talking to you."

ok, so it's not quite as bad as that, but I'm almost certain that I would get the exact same looks from people if I said: "I'm a brain surgeon, specialising in neuro-psychosis-related injury-discombobulation" blank looks all around regardless... I actually do have a copy of the intel 64 and IA-32 architectures software development manuals volumes 1-3 and I read them! wooo!

Debbie definately goes to sleep quite a bit faster than usual since trying to explain the intricacies of buffer overflow vulnerabilities - she usually picks up the general concepts of most things I talk about, but not so much recently. :-( I need some IT geek friends to bounce ideas off.

Work's been good to both of us - I've joined my current job not expecting bonuses (in the current economic climate at least) and have recieved two quarterly profit related bonuses and was just informed that this month I'll get a yearly bonus and a pay rise..... this comes after they just fired about 6 people with no notice and have announced that they'll be cutting down on contract staff in the near future - I seriously don't understand these people - "we're in very hard financial times, we're going to have to lay people off - oh and by the way - everyone we've made enough profit for everyone to get a significant profit-related bonus in addition to the standard yearly bonus (only for those people remaining of course)" oh well I'm not complaining, got a glowing performance review just this week, and as a result of the bonuses, we're finally back to the financial situation prior to being broken into and tripping to france!

Christmas eve we went to the winter wonderland in hyde park and went ice-skating on the rink there. Christmas day we went to a friends party, had an absolutely delicious roast meal, played a game of scrabble that got a little bit too competetive and stayed up chatting with people until the wee hours of the morning. finally got home at 3am having broken our resolve of going to bed early this christmas/new years after making ourselves sick last year. Thankfully this time arround we got sick early in december so we were all good for the holiday season.

The party was easily three-quarters Aussies, with the rest being from singapore or malasia - it was great to have the "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!" chear answered by more than just a feable voice here and there. In fact, I don't think there was one english person at the party! it was just like home!

On boxing day evening we went to see the nutcracker suite ballet. This was our first ballet ever. Debbie seemed to like it but I had a hard time sitting through it. I appreciated the music, the tallent of the dancers and the ability of the director and actors to convey a story without any words, but the entire thing was fairly dull. the first half was alright because there was an actual story. however, the second half was just dancing for the sake of it..... I would much rather see a musical.

Anyway, seeing as we had a few spare days of holiday, we did our first touristy thing for about 6 months and went to windsor castle!

hooked up with some new friends from the Christmas party who'd just come to London a couple of months ago and with our new camera in hand, we took a train to Windsor. It was a very cold day, but hey - you can't beat Aussie Friendship to warm the soul - (this photo by our friend Jenni)

It really was a beautiful day perfect clear skies, very cool and very cold at the same time. a paradox that you rarely get in this country.

In the Visitors centre where we had to line up to get tickets, we were able to talk to one of the stewards. Apparently the queen usually spends Christmas in Scotland so we would be able to see the state appartments, which are usually closed when the queen is in residence. We asked if she had met the queen and she said yes "she's a lovely lady - about 5'3" and apparently would certainly wave to the crowds visiting the castle if she happened to be outside.

Unfortunately the "front" of the castle that you usually see in pictures is actually facing the private gardens so this is the best "front" shot that we could get:

have to appologise for this one - I really didn't feel like smiling for it - I was cold. I wasn't grumpy, just didn't feel like posing for a photo :-)

The Castle is set on quite a significant hill, that you can't notice until you're actually standing on the castle ramparts:

the walls look to be about 15 meters high off the ground and are on a fairly steep slope - it's a very good defensive position.

of course - I happened to catch a mission-impossible style heist in progress - first step: disable the CCTV cameras:

This area is called the Quadrangle - the state appartments are on the left.

our friend Jenni caught us posing for a photo.

After the state appartments, we went down to St George's cathedral, which is still within the castle wall (yes, it's a huge castle).

here's the same shot almost appearing in wikipedia, this painting was done in 1848:

This is the home-cathedral of the knights of the order of the garter - the most exclusive order of chivalry in the world. unfortunately there was no photography allowed within the cathedral, but it was so amazing. there has been a church service in the church every single day for the last 700 years without fail. behind the pulpit is the private area for members of the order of the Garter. The family crests of all the members were displayed on tabards that were hung over each seat. the woodwork was exquisite.

Here's a photo of a postcard of the order of the garter stalls:

Many many famous royals are buried here. The queen mum and her husband King George VI were burried in a little enclave under an engraved granite plaque.

overall it was brilliant - I havn't written much about the history etc - I think we're all a little bit castled and pallaced out so we just went through enjoying it rather than trying to learn the history. Windsor was special though, all the other castles etc are set out as they were back in the height of their use. but Windsor is still in use and so contains a combination of old relics and modern fittings. Everything is fresh and feels lived-in. it really is an amazing place.

It has been absolutely freezing over the past week - got to -12 degrees last wednesday night!!!! the fountains in trafalga square froze over completely! (below photos from london paper because, although we went to see it, we didn't bring our camera)

That's all for now folks! definately truly ruly more photos comming up next time we do something interesting!

wow

2008-09-24T02:18:00.002+01:00

I havn't posted for a while have I.....

I must get onto it I guess...

having fun though! :-)

went to the notting hill carnaval
found a bar in clapham south that sells packets of timtams and twisties - they also actually know what a lemon-lime-and-bitters is.
Debbie's learning french
I'm learning to program in C.

anyway - I should get debbie to post something - she hasn't done so for longer than me :-)

We're both well anyway.

a post!

2008-07-30T22:14:00.002+01:00

so hi everyone. I've been really slack obviously and not posted anything for a while, but I think I'll be getting back into it shortly.

news for us:

We are moving house shortly, found a nice 1 bedder in the same area on the first floor for cheaper rent than we are paying now. the kitchen is slightly smaller, but everything else is about the same size.
I've started a new job (on monday) which I'm absolutely loving (more below)
Debbie lost her mobile phone in France so that's why she hasn't been returning your SMS's in case you wondered. (nor has she been on facebook for aeons so that's the reason she hasn't returned your messges on their either :-) )
our police report on the robbery hasn't yet come back (should be in the next 2 weeks) so we havn't got our insurance money yet unfortunately.
We're both healthy and although I tried my hardest to get sick during my last two weeks at work, I just couldn't justify it.

Job: it's awesome - it's on bishopsgate, (here) . if you zoom out, you can see it's right near the gherkin and liverpool street station. it's very cool to be working in the city finally, although the novelty of traveling on the tube to work rather than the overland train wore off about two stations allong on the first day. comming home from work today it took 1.5hrs to get home, 20 mins of which was stuck half-way between stations, squished like a sardine up against other people with B.O. and bad breath in the sweltering humidity.

speaking of humidity.... I never thought I'd say it, in fact I've always paid out the 'poor' english, who have to put up with extreme temperatures of up to *gasp* 30 degrees... but it turns out that yes, it is actually really bad. while in Australia, the heat is a dry heat. whereas the humidity forcast for tomorrow is 84% and 29 degrees.... this is really unbearable and neither debbie and I have been able to sleep properly since sunday night. this coupled with the fact that the aircon in all the office buildings was obviously put together by 2-year olds and breaks at the first sign of strain means that we're hot and sweaty 24hrs a day. I even got to work on my first day and all the servers had turned themselves off over the weekend due to the excessive 'heat'..... what a stupid lattitude to live in! give me sub-tropical anyday...

so yes, I'm very happy with the job though - everyone uses dual screens as a default instead of the developers having to push to justify them (or even go out and buy my own) as I have had to do with my previous workplaces. and it is casual dress all the time unless visiting a client's site (this is the only reason I've survived the heat the last few days). free coffee, free packets of chips, free chocolate bars and a subsidised coke machine! yep. I'm definately very much enjoying the job so far.

[computer nerd section]
ok, so the guys that I work with are so hardcore that they use vi to edit oracle pl/sql code and command line SQLplus rather than an IDE. now SQLplus I can sort of understand, although not my preference, but they actually PREFER to use vi. Of course you can understand that this meant that my self-geekesteem took a real hit and I have spent the past 3 days refreshing my memory on vi commands...... soon I'll be hacking pl/sql code on a black-and-green terminal window with the best of them and I'll feel like a self-respecting computer geek again.
[end computer nerd section]

so that's about all for now I guess.

oh - one of my work collegues went to see dark night on it's premiere night in London last thursday, he also went on the weekend.... twice.... when he came to work he said it was so good that every nation of the world should stop all scientific research and concentrate on bringing heath ledger back from the dead. Debbie and I went to try to see it on the weekend also, but all the sessions were all booked out everywhere we went. will try again this weekend I guess :-)

no more photos or video for a while

2008-05-04T14:37:00.002+01:00

so on wednesday we got broken into... they kicked in the door. took our still camera, video camera, laptop and computer monitor, speakers and keyboard from our new computer, my ipod, my leatherman the recovery CD's from the new computer (what on earth for I don't know). but most annoyingly a folder that had my passport, birth certificates, passport and visa application forms, national insurance number (uk equivalent of a TFN), my original oracle certification, my suncorp secure ID token and some other important documents.

Debbie still has all her stuff but obviously we don't have a computer at home so I'm posting from an internet cafe.

We got the locksmith arround he fixed the door so well that basically the it would split in half before anyone could open it. still we are computerless.....

travel insurance will thankfully cover most things, including the passport application fee etc.. it's just really really dang inconvenient. also quite stressfull. Debbie's been taking it better than I have, but Debbie isn't in real risk of identity theft.

I've signed up for a notification service with a credit agency so I'll be notified whenever anyone (including myself) tries to open a bank account or a mobile phone account or apply for credit or does anything significant in my name and dissalow it if it isn't me.

anyway. so depending on how fast we can get the insurance claim processed, we may or may not have a camera or access to the net from home for a while. I'll blog from net cafe's and friends places though.

At least we're both safe :-)

ping

2008-04-28T20:14:00.001+01:00

yes, we're still here..

just still recovering from our belgian blog.

Debbie is still working and enjoying it. I'm still working and not entirely enjoying it - life is as normal. :-)

I've been put full time on a data warehousing project which is interesting. I'm learning a lot but the data warehouse is in Microsoft's SQL server rather than oracle, leading me to be glad I have a foam frustration brick sitting on my desk.

anyway, until next time.

Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (part 3 of 3)

2008-04-12T00:22:00.003+01:00

This is the third part of our three part blog about our invasion of Belgium.

In order for it to make sense, it's probably a good idea to read part one and two first:

Click here for Part 1

Click here for Part 2

We had tossed up the idea of us making our own way to Amsterdam after the tour had been canceled. but we decided against it for a number of reasons. mostly because we didn't know how to get there or back. but also because we still hadn't seen much of brussels except the area around the Grand Place.

So after a slightly better night sleep and a hearty breakfast, we set out to see as much of Brussels as we could. Seeing as we really didn't know much about it, we started off at a Meuseum right in the middle of the grand place.

As meuseums go, it was a fairly small one, you can see the size of the building from the above photo and it didn't really go much deaper than 20 meters so we got through it by about midday. In a way I was sort of disapointed. or I guess dissilusioned about meuseums in general. There was lots of statues and paintings and bits of architecture left over from before when the Grand Place area was destroyed. the plaques would say things like "this is the only remaining part of the original xyz famous building before it was burnt down. it has subsequently been rebuilt to the exact same specifications as previously" and so pretty much we could have just stayed outside and looked up and seen the exact same piece of building except not cracked and burnt....

It wasn't all that bad though. there were some great scale models of Brussels back when they had a wall around the entire city and some cool old books and stuff that we couldn't read because we don't speak belgish.... So we probably only ended up spending about an hour in there. but as our tour guide told us the day before: there are more than 80 meuseums in Brussels.

we also walked arround the grand place area a bit more:

yes, ok, we love this building:

Found a sculpture where people had put gas masks on them, I assume as a comment on increasing polution:

After a quick argument about what we were going to eat for lunch we went somewhere neither of us liked and ate some salad.... it gave us energy though and with a quick glance at our map of brussels, we headded off towards the royal palace.

we walked through a very nice park that would look absolutely amazing in the spring/summer but was a bit bland without any flowers or leaves on the trees. so we only took one photo:

We were amazed by the cobled streets - we kind of expected them in Gent and Brugge and in the mostly pedestrian area of the Grand Place etc, but to see them pretty much on every street in the middle of the city was mind boggling.. not to mention difficult to walk on and noisy as the cars go past. in the third video that we made, you can hear the tires screaming out for mercy as they drive over the cobble stone roads....

the palace wasn't all that much to see really, in fact it was quite a boring looking building compared to a large portion of the other buildings and churches around the place.

so we took a few shots there and moved onto the justice courts, a massive building at pretty much the highest point in the city.

On the way we came across a meuseum of musical instruments, a town-hall-looking building, a massive church, and a garden that was enclosed with statues representing each profession.

I tried my best to hide the tramline that was accross the middle of the otherwise cool shot, see if you can pick it:

here's the garden with the statues of each profession/trade:

Sadly, I did not see a computer programmer represented. I'll have to have a stern chat with brussels management...

Finally reaching the justice courts we spent a few minutes taking in the views and taking video and stills of the beautiful city. we could see the tall building in the Grand Place, we could see the Basilica de Koekelberg that we drove past the previous day, and we could faintly see the Atomium, Which we knew existed but we knew nothing about.

courts of justice - a more extravigant building and almost as large as the royal palace:

war memorial:

Building in the Grand Place as well as the atomium

Basilica de Koekelberg:

After a bit we looked at our watches. it was only 2:00pm so debbie said: "well, let's go to the atomium". I was kind of reluctant, but I couldn't think of any decent reason not to apart from the fact that we don't speak french and may have dificulty catching the train, it looked like a long way off and we hadn't had a decent lunch yet. still, after quite a bit of convincing from debbie, I agreed. So we set off for the nearest train station.... and we got about 2 meters before debbie panicked that we were going the wrong way, I assured her that we were not.... 5 frustrating map-turning minutes later and we were off again (in the same direction I might add). I think that this moment defined our travel habits. We annoy eachother when we're on holidays sometimes because we get frustrated with the other's shortcommings, but the truth is, if it was just me on holidays, I'd probably sleep in until 12 and not actually go and see anything much. and if it was just debbie on holidays, then she'd probably head off somewhere completely in the wrong direction from the thing she wanted to see.... and so we decided we complimented eachother quite nicely in these areas and took the train hand-in-hand to the atomium.

Google map here

We actually thought that the Atomiom was a fairly recent (like less than 10 years) addition to belgium, but it turns out that it was built for the 1958 world expo. right in the middle of the space age. it's a model of an iron crystal maginfied 165 billion times. the spheres are 18 meters in diameter, the tubes are 23 meters long and 3 meters in diameter and the whole thing stands at 102 meters tall. so of course we just had to try the coffee at the top.

We took the elevator to the top floor, it was quite funny because there was an elevator person pushing the buttons for all the tourists and they had to translate a quick commentary on the elevator including stats on how fast it goes, the fact that at the time it was built it was the fastest elevator in the world, the height of the atomium and how long it would take to get to the top, all in three diferent languages and under the 15 or so seconds it takes to get to the top, it was quite an impressive feat.

At the top was an amazing view of the country side. There were interactive touch-screens that were linked to external video cameras so you could zoom in on places of interest arround the countryside and recieve a commentary about them. We unfortunately couldn't get in past all the kids that were hogging them. a suprising number of them were being taught patiently by parents who were showing them the various sights and explaining what each of them were. one particular parent caught my ear when he kept repeating what sounded like "notre dame", I couldn't obviously understand the rest becuase it was in french. I thought notre dame was in some other country

a quick web search revealed that there are four bacilicas in Belgium called Notre Dame something-or other...

"mini europe"

There's that basilica again:

anyway, so we still hadn't had a decent lunch so we walked up right to the very top where the resturant is, hoping for a good meal, but expecting it to be expensive. the waiter was the perfect look-down-his-nose french-speaking tuxedo wearing type. quite facinating to watch really, here's a rough transcript:

us: "could we have a table for two please?"
him: *thick french accent* "you want a table?"
us: "yes please, for two"
him: *looking down his nose* "right this way sir"

so we waited at the table for a while and stared at the menu, which only had drinks on it.

us: "is there a food menu?"
him: "a food menu sir?" *distainful raised eyebrow*
us: "yes please do you serve any meals at all?"
him: *exasperated look* "this is not possible sir, the lunch is finished, there will be no more food until dinner"
us: "oh, ok we'll just order drinks then"

so we order a hot chocolate and I order a cafe latte

him: "you want a coffee... with milk?"
me: "yes please"
him: "ok" *smirk*

so out comes debbie's hot chocolate and my black coffee with a jug of milk on the side. Well, I thought I'd had all possible weird combinations of coffee, but I never thought someone would give me milk on the side. The Latte with the straw and swizzle stick I had in sloane square is still the leader of course.

in anycase the coffee was actually very good and the waiter warmed up to us a bit after he realised that we would be actually spending money. they must get heaps of people just wanting to come up to take photos. all in all, it was a very fun experience. it cost us 18 euro for both of us to get in and another 6ish for the coffee and hot chocolate, but hey... We're only in Belgium once this year.

We got back to the hotel at about 5:00pm, having not eaten properly yet. we quickly freshened up and went out in search of some food.

We walked around quite a bit trying to decide, and ended up at a nice italian place about 10 meters away from our hotel. Debbie went for a standard bolg and I couldn't decide between all the pizza offerings.. (well, mostly I couldn't read what they were) so I asked the waiter which was his favourite, and he listed about 3 or 4 and said that the last one was his all-time favourite - a 4-cheese pizza. but said that I may or may not like it so much... so I said "is that your favourite? the cheese pizza?" he said yes, so I said "great! I'll have that one". and it was certainly delicious. I think there was even blu-vein cheese in there, it was so flavoursome.

afterwards, we walked around the block, going past the cool-looking building in the Grand place we said "this is the last time we're going to see this at night time"... we kept on walking and eventually came around to it again and said to ourselves "this is the last time we're going to see this building at night time." anyway, this time it really was as we found a waffle place :-) we went back to our hotel (about 10 meters from the waffel place, did I mention how great a hotel location we got?) to eat:

I couldn't fit anymore than a bite in, but it certainly was the best waffle I've ever tasted. Debbie ate the rest and we went to sleep!

anyway, now's about the right time to watch video three:

Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (the movie!) Part3

So the final day, we got up early, packed a bit and went down to eat breakfast. We had a bit of a mix up with the payment of breakfast and had to pay a second time (we had paid for all three days worth of breakfast on the first day when we checked in, but the lady seemed a bit new.) anyway, eventually we found the original receipts and we got a refund for the second payment. which brings us to the Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip Three: Always keep your hotel receipts in a safe place until you check out, particularly in a place where you don't speak the language.

Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip Four was identified on the way to the eurostar station: make sure you double, triple check the station you know you want to go to with the station name on the train platform. We should have taken the orange line heading towards "Delacroix", but instead we managed to catch the yellow line to "Debroux". The human tendancy to look at the first and last letters of each word and assume the rest caused us to go six stations in the wrong direction before we realised where we were.

However, because of my obsessive-compulsive habit of taking an estimated time to do something and adding another 50% on top, we arrived in plenty of time at the eurostar station and had time for a quick cup of tea before checking in.
.
Now I was determined this time to time how long it took to get through the chunnel, We got to Lille again and I knew it was only a short while to go..... and then I woke up inside the chunnel.... so I don't know how long it takes unfortunately. We'll see what happens when we go to France in June.

phew! finally finished the blog - it's only taken me 3 weeks... I think that after mum, dad, nathan, jill and sophie come over and our week long trip to france I'm going to have to take the rest of the year off to blog about it....

Final thoughts:

If you have to walk on cobblestones all day, take very good walking shoes or hiking boots. We had sore calves by the time we got back to London.

We thought that although it was a very short visit and it was pushing it budget wise, especially since we've got a week long trip to france in two months time, it was very much worth it. This was our first trip to europe and the 4th country that we've been in. But it was so much more, it gave us confidence, it made us feel like we could do anything and go anywhere. I guess that since everyone spoke english, or at least understood it, it was a "safe" couple of cities to travel to, but it was an important step for us, knowing that we can go to a place and find our way around.

It was interesting analysing our feelings coming back. on the train on the way home, I was really looking forward to everyone speaking my language without an accent again. I was really looking forward to "going home" if you like, I guess I was homesick. Then, when we got to London, everyone spoke with a thick English accent..... We weren't quite home yet...

Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (part 2 of 3)

2008-04-11T23:40:00.004+01:00

This is the second part of our three part blog about our invasion of Belgium.

In order for it to make sense, it's probably a good idea to read part one first:

click here

...After dinner, we walked out of the resturant into the snow! it hadn't yet started piling up on the ground, but it was falling quite heavily. we got to our room and took some video of the snow falling on street. unfortunately we didn't bring any toothpaste, the hotel didn't have any and all the shops were closed so we just brushed our teeth with the toothbrushes and agreed we'd go out first thing in the morning to get toothpaste.

Debbie did some experementation with different settings on the camera:

We turned on the TV and saw a bit of Harry Potter except it was all in french, on another channel was cliffhanger - I never realised that Sylvester Stalone spoke french either.... We ended up finding Catch me if you can in English and watched that.

We had dificulty with the bed. the springs weren't very good or something. I spent the first few hours squirming arround. I felt as though I was on a slope and I didn't have very much room, being right on the edge of the bed and constantly rolling in towards the middle. Finnaly I sat up and saw that debbie was practically sleeping right in the middle of the bed, so I woke her up and told her to go sleep on her side of the bed.. this fixed both the sleeping area and the slope problems and we both promptly went to sleep.

So we woke up bright and early on Tuesday morning... well, early at least. took a bit of video and some photos of the most beautiful city skyline that we'd ever seen:

We couldn't enjoy it for too long because we had to get to the tour place by 8:45am in order to be in time for our free tour of Gent and Brugge, The breakfast buffet at the hotel opened at 7am and the corner store opened at 8:30. so in a beautifully executed operation we dragged ourselves out of bed at 7:30, got ready and started eating by 8:00, I was standing at the door of the chemist when the owner came to unlock the door at 8:30, bought some toothpaste and got back to the hotel at 8:40, we cleaned our teeth and rushed to the tour place which was about 10 meters away from our hotel door (did I mention what an excellent location our hotel was in?) and got there right on the dot of 8:45 despite having a rotten night sleep. Which brings us to the Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip number Two: A really full stomach is a good temporary cure for lack of sleep.

Pretty soon after we arrived at the tour place, an American couple and their son arrived also. At about 9:00, the lady from the tour place walked us to the bus, there were a couple of people waiting outside also. When we got to the bus, it was already half full, there was about 30 people in total. The tour guide came along, asking each of us which language we spoke, the majority was English and then suprisingly Spanish, so nearly everything he said from then on was first in english and then again in Spanish.

The bus started off and we got to see a lot of Brussels itself, from the city centre, to the CBD with modern buildings, to a bit of the residential area. the tour guide occasionally told us interesting, but not very memorable, facts about the city. on the way out of the city, we drove past Basilica Koekelberg (or "La basilique de Koekelberg") where they were having an expo of davinci's work - quite a beautiful church, and unfortunately we didn't have time to visit.

La Basilique de Koekelberg

There was heaps of snow on the ground, and being the first day that we'd ever seen snow we were absolutely mesmerised by it, we actually saw people making snow-men!

Well, after what seemed like a short trip we arrived at Gent. "this town puts the Gent back in Elegant" said the tour guide...

Basically gent is made up of a whole bunch of churches and beautiful buildings and a canal or two. it really is an elegant town. The tour guide took us past town hall and to one area where there were three large churches within about 100 meters of eachother. We went inside one (unfortunately we weren't able to take photos inside). it was absolutely amazing.

cool church:

Arround the back, behind where the pulpit would be was this amazing set of scupltures and behind that was a walkway that went entirely arround the back of the church. it contained little alcoves that had sculptures or paintings and sometimes crypts etc... very beautiful.

After this church, the tour guide said that we had some free time (about 1 hour) and then we had to all be back at the bus ready to go at 11:30. At this point Debbie and I started getting annoyed at eachother though - We wanted to see the castle and so I was walking fast so we could get to the castle and back in time and debbie was walking slow and taking video of everything.... it was frustrating for both of us. anyway, we did eventually make it to the castle and got back just in time.

other random churches and buildings:

us-shots:

one of my favorite shots of the whole trip:

Really cool looking castle:

Next stop was Brugge. Brugge is sort of like an island, surrounded by a moat and intersected by canals. apparently it's called the Venice of northern Europe. Well, it certainly was beautiful.

This time, there was basically a guided tour all the way so we stuck with the tour guide. It is really hard to describe the city, everything is beautiful. the city council a long while back made a restriction on building new buildings and it has really paid off. they get 3 million tourists a year comming through the town. I'm finding it really hard to describe the town because of the large number of beautiful old buildings. it was like the entire town was a meuseum, with cobbled streets literally everywhere (we didn't see even one bitchimen road), horse and carts clip clopping down the roads and swans floating peacfully on the canals.

I didn't get one decent shot of a swan.. they were all camera shy:

Our first stop was in a convent garden area,

there were signs up all arround the place requesting silence. Well, all our stomachs must have been growling too loudly so the tour guide took us to lunch. We had one hour to eat and the tour guide said that this place (a local pub/resturant) was the only place that could feed so many people within an hour.

They were certainly efficient at it. there was a set three-course menu as well as a more expensive normal menu. the difference in cost was really significant. one steak from the normal menu cost the same as a three course meal from the set menu. and so we ordered from the set menu. I had some vegetable soup and steak for the entree and main, debbie had sort of cheese cakes and a beef stew for hers. the menu only said "desert" which turned out to be chocolate mousse. (this is the same as the other resturant we went to the previous night, where it said "desert" and we got chocolate mousse also... we thought that perhaps it was a belgian thing).

So just before we ordered, the waiter asked us what we'd like to drink, and the tour guide happened to be walking past and said "the local beer is absolutely excelent", and so we ordered a local beer each.

We found out later that a large number of the belgian produced beers are actually brewed by monestaries (including the one we had which came from Abbaye de Leffe (the Abbey of Leffe)). back ages ago before they had propper sanitisation and clean water (we're talking hundreds of years back) beer and wine were the only germ free beverages available, and so it was the mandate of the monestaries to brew the beer to a certain standard (remember friar tuck from the robin hood story?). a tradition that has continued to this day dispite the water being clean. Belgium has over 400 brands of beer. some are fruity, some are spicy, they're all different and can vary in taste as much as a light white wine varies to a heavy red. ..and I bet you thought Australians liked beer eh? well, as the tourist guide said: "Australans like beer so much, you must have all been born in Belgium!".

random cool shot:

Next up was a church..

and in this one we were allowed to take photos so we did. inside was the only sculpture done by Michelangelo outside italy (Michelangelo was the orange one with the nunchucks) the "Madonna and child" which didn't really look all that much different from the other sculptures that we had seen through the other churches. There was also some monks doing their cool singing (debbie managed to catch both the sculpture AND the singing on video at the same time) and a very very extravagant Pulpit.

Pulpit:

A plaque an the wall said this about the pulpit:
"In earlier times, the Word of God was proclaimed from this pulpit, whose sides are decorated with pictures from the gospels and relevant texts. Below, Wisdom is symbolically depicted. The sounding-board is decorated with medalions of the four latin church fathers and crowned with a representation of truth."

We spent so much time looking at the sculpture and listening to the music and taking photos etc that we suddenly looked arround and our tour group had gone! we quickly ran out, but couldn't see them, and my sense of direction which had worked so well up until this point, failed me. so debbie suggested that we look at the map.... What a preposterous idea I thought initially! but it worked! and we found our tour group just about to cast off on a boat tour. We managed to hop on in time and we were treated to a mostly peacefull boat trip allong the canals. I say mostly peacful because the driver had this loud speaker that he used to tell us about stuff on the sides of the canal, he spoke perfect english and what sounded (to us) like perfect spanish, but the words sounded somewhat contrived, like we were listening to an advertisement for the city. We guessed that if you did 30 min boat tours all day every day, you'd end up saying the exact same thing every trip.

this building here:

can you see the round holes in the tower bits of the previous photo? these were for carrier pidgeons to enter.

originally, most of the buildings were built like this one: as was the style at the time in most of europe including London.

but due to what happened in 1666 in London, designs changed to using stone. this was the only wooden building that we saw in all of brugge.

After the boat tour (which finished at the same place it started) the tour group got the pleasure of seeing some lace being made by hand at a lace shop. It's quite facinating; the Lacer (a word we made up to indicate someone who maces lace) has a series of about 20 bobins that she weaved over and under eachother in an intricate pattern to create the lace. it must have taken years of practice to get to the level of skill and dexterity that she had. The technique must have been passed down as a tradition from mother to daughter for as long as Brugge has been making lace. Unfortunately, I couldn't help but thinking that it was a task that could easily be automated by a machine and done in a fraction of the time, with next to no skill.... but hey, I'm a computer programmer, what do I know about thousand year old traditions....

after that, we had 30 mins spare time where we could do what we like, the tour guide suggested either the main square or a really old pub, we'd be going through the main square later on anyway so we went to the pub to find a bathroom. We sat at the bar for a bit and the tour guide came up and we started chatting. Turns out he's actually french, but he speaks 10 languages fluently including Japanese. quite amazing really.

Afterwards we went to the main square for a bit where this massive bellfry is and then we all piled on a local bus to get back to the tour coach and then most people actually went to sleep on the coach during the ride home.

the belfry:

Debbie and I went straight back to the hotel after we arrived back in brussels. we were both hungry and tired, I said, let's just have a nap for 10 mins and so we both crashed on the bed. an hour later we got up and went out to the Grand Place again to find some food.

We walked arround the streets surrounding the Grand Place for a while, trying to decide what we wanted to eat. Finally we came across the oposite end of the alley way where we had eaten the Escargot the previous night. The first resturant had a very persuasive waiter out the front who asked if we spoke french or english. He enthusiasticly explained how good the menu is and how there was an open fireplace inside and a spare table next to it. We said that yes, it looked good, but we havn't seen all our options, we'll be back. he said that this is what everyone said and he'll give us a free glass of champaign each. so we said ok :-) the resturant turned out to be very nice. we got our free champaign and a seat next to the open fire. the food was very well cooked and came out quite quickly. I had fish soup for entree and salmon for main, debbie had prawns and steak. again, we got chocolate mousse for desert. the menu here was 18 euro each, but it was quite worth it. Halfway through the meal, a blak domestic cat, obviously owned by the manager of the store walked down the stairs and looked hopefully at us and spent the next few minutes moving between tables staring wishfully up at the diners.

Debbie made the observation that we were all being "categorized"

Now would be a great time to watch the second video. as with the other, you may want to hit pause and go make another cup of tea :-)

Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (the movie!) Part2

Andrew and Debbie invade Belgium (part 1 of 3)

2008-04-11T22:52:00.004+01:00

Well, here it is, our blog about our trip to Belgium. I'll warn you in advance: This is by far our longest blog. There is a bit over 30 mins of video, quite a few photos and heaps of writing. Youtube doesn't allow videos longer than 10 minutes so we've made 3 10(ish) min videos.

We've broken it down into sections so you can take it in a few smaller bits corresponding with each video we've done or do it all in one sitting if you wish. so here it is:

So we bought 240 euro for the trip which cost us just under 200 pounds. our plan was to spend no more than 30 euro each per day on food and other stuff. This turned out to be somewhere between 50 and 100 euros under what we really needed.

Monday (London to Brussels)

So this was our first time on the Eurostar. It was extremely easy to get. We had ordered our tickets, accommodation and tour online so all we did when we got to St Pancras international was stick our credit card in the machine and the tickets printed out for us. We arrived about 1 hour before the train was due to depart, this allowed us a bit of time for a coffee before embarking. Checking in was really easy and passport control was very quick. After a quick bag scan and a stamp on our passports, we were off!

We were both carrying a backpack and also had one small weeled suitcase. we found this was heaps for a three night stay, and even allowed us a bit of room for souvenires.

So as we pulled out of the station, it started snowing. Even though we were missing out, we didn't mind of course - brussels without snow would be better than London with snow, we were sure! The train took about 20 mins to get to the chunnel and I estimate about 30 minutes to go through it. I didn't really take note of the time that we came out so I'm not sure exactly. after about 1.5hrs we made a quick stop at lille and then another 20 mins and we arrived at Brussels midi.

Now, I'm ashamed to say it, but the first thing that we did on arriving in Brussels was to eat at their equivalent of Mcdonalds..... they call it "quick" but it's pretty much the same as the golden arches. Now that I think about it, I didn't see a McDonalds anywhere during our stay!

Next was a short ride on the local trains ("The Metro") which were like London's tubes, but not quite so tube-like.... this was very easy, the ticket guy at Brussels Midi spoke good english and gave us a colour coded map and some good directions to where we wanted to go. Probably about 15 mins on the train and we arrived at Centraal Station. The stations were suprisingly close together, and as we found out later on, Brussels, despite being the capital of Belgium and the headquarters of the Euorpean Union, it is actually a really small city. Its population is only 1.1 million. That's about half of Brisbane, and 1/14th of London.

Arriving at Centraal, we came out to street level and it was snowing!!! Debbie took some video at this point (shown in the first video below). I need to explain why I was looking so exasperated in the video: We had just been on the train for two hours from London, had the stress of taking a local train with everything in either French or Dutch (it was easy, but still stressfull), we were carrying heavy backpacks and I was carrying a heavy suitcase which I just finished dragging up a flight of stairs. It was cold and wet and debbie was standing in the open with our expensive video camera and getting rained/snowed on. I just wanted to get to the hotel room, I told debbie that she could stand in the snow all she wanted to AFTER we put our bags down, but no... she wanted to video it right there and then.... I guess it did make good footage, and I guess it was our first real experience with snow, so if she can forgive me for being tired and stressed, I can forgive her for being over-excited :-)

so... We saw snow! this is our first time actually walking through snow! unfortunately I was too focused on finding the hotel to really enjoy it. Debbie kept walking really slow and stopping every now and then to try to find where we were. I had memorized the map from central to our hotel so I was getting more frustrated every minute.
"it's this way! come on..." I would say
"hang on... how do you know, are you sure?" debbie would reply
Andrew: "for the third time... yes! we're looking for the curvy building, can you see a curvy building here?"
Debbie: "well, no.."
Andrew: "that's because it's around the corner"
*a very very short distance later*
Debbie: "this area is kinda curvy"
Andrew: *Exasperated stare* "Debbie... are ANY of these buildings ANYTHING like the curvy one we saw on the map?"
Debbie: "... uh... not really...."
Andrew: *storms off in the correct direction*

Neverthless we did end up going past a really cool church, but we didn't stop for photos. We figured we'd go back later on when we weren't carrying backpacks and the sky wasn't raining ice.

Anyway, we eventually got to the hotel and checked in. When we got up to the room we were amazed! it was on the top floor on the corner of the building so we had views of Brussels in two directions! out of one window we could see the big building that forms part of the Grand Place - it was absolutely spectacular.

(Normally at this point I'd put in a picture, but now that I look through all the photos we didn't actually take any from the hotel room until the night time. but there is a video from the room of course :-) )

Hotel reception gave us a note from the tour organisation that we had arranged to go with for a day trip to Amsterdam on tuesday. it said that unfortunately due to the fact that we were the only people booked on the trip, the tour had been cancelled and we would recieve a full refund. They offered us a free tour of Gent and Brugge as concilation. In hindsight, we were both glad that we went to see Gent and Brugge rather than Amsterdam because the tour was exausting and going all the way to another country would have brought us back to our hotel at about 9pm. We'll go back to Holland another day.

So Next we went out to the streets and headed to the Grand Place. the 'A' in each of Grand and Place is pronounced like the 'A' in "bark". so we instantly saw that we made a very good choice of Hotel. we couldn't have picked one closer to the centre of town. We walked through allyways, arcades, squares, The shops were mostly Chocolate shops, lace shops, waffle places, tourist-type shops or local resturants. there was the occasional clothing shop and there was a whole section of about 6 or 7 shops in an arcade that only sold leather clothes. the highlight of course was that it was still snowing!!! woooo!!! we were so happy (even me, seeing as we had put our heavy bags down) We took lots of photos and some video, the architecture is absolutely amazing. It's almost overwhelming - you can't just stand there staring at one beautiful building because there are three others just as beautiful next to it and even more if you turn arround! it's hard to know where to start! Be thankful though, this blog is shorter than it would have been because we don't know anything much about the history of brussels or the Grand Place so we've got nothing to write on this subject, just photos. :-)

here's a google map of the place:
here(click me)

some cool buildings:

and some photos of us having fun in the snow:

Debbie doing her "Rock on" pose:

me doing my "I'm trying desperately not to look boring in photos" pose:

my second attempt at not being boring:

a not very good attempt at a couple shot:

anyway, we were hungry and I'm really ashamed to admit that even with all these local coffee shops and resturants, we went, yet again to a "Quick" and ordered chicken nuggets.....We just wanted a snack to keep us going, I know it's no excuse.... We went to see some of the local markets in the square and we eventually went to the Mannekin Pis which was about 100 meters away from the Grand Place. it was much smaller than we were expecting... it's really not all that spectacular, it's just a small kid sized statue of a small kid urinating into a fountain.... so of course we took photos and video etc, like all the other people that were crowded arround. :-)

after that we kept walking to see what we could find away from the central bit of the town. it kind of gets a bit boring when we started getting into the CBD part, modern boring looking buildings. we did find another fountain though:

here's a typical allyway:

You'll see on the first video that we go into an arcade, this was about 100 meters long (you can see it fairly clearly on that google map if you go to the east a bit. it's the long blue-roofed thing.) and consisted almost entirely of chocolate and lace shops... still we found a solitary coffee shop and sat down. Debbie had a hot chocolate and I had a cuppachino rather than my usual latte, mostly because neither of us could really read anything on the menu and I figured that asking for a latte would probably just get me a glass of milk... the cappacino wasn't very good though, the coffee was burnt. we did get some free nougat with our drinks though - mmmmm nougat.

After the coffee break we went back up to the hotel for a bit of a freshen up before dinner. It was so good having the hotel there so close, we never had to look around for a public toilet, we just went up to the hotel room.

After Debbie had a shower, we went back to the arcade to have dinner. halfway through the arcade, it branches off to a narrow allyway with heaps of local resturants. nearly all of them had displays of mussels and other seafood outside. all of them had at least one waiter standing outside encouraging people to come in to eat. a lot of them had set menus on display with three course meals set out. We picked one that we had seen while walking through earlier. the main reason was that it had Escargot on the menu.... Inside, there was an open fireplace which were seated close to. the waiter gave us the menus and we picked a three course meal for 12 euro each. Which brings us to the Howie Associates London Branch Travel Tip One: often these set menus work out much cheaper than ordering individual food from the menu.

We both had escargot for entree, mussels for mains and Chocolate mousse for desert. Neither of us had eaten escargot before so it was a good experience. Debbie had quite a bit of trouble getting the slippery little suckers out of the shells, and I think that she actually may have pushed two of them in so far that we couldn't get them out. so I ate my 6 and debbie unfortunately only had 4. They really weren't all that great honestly. the sauce that they were in was kind of a pestoish thing, which was really nice, but the snails themselves tasted really bland. their texture was sort of like non-chewy calamari. The mussels were really good though. they were in a sort of onion-soup type sauce which by itself would have made a very good entree, it had onions and celery and all sorts of yummy stuff, and of course the mussels had been cooked in it so they had soaked up it's flavour and tasted absolutely wonderful. We're used to the mussels at Belgo (the belgian resturant in Covent Garden) which are generally in a thick sauce, but these ones tasted more... seafoodish. We topped it off with a small bottle of rose. Total meal cost: 42 euros - not a bad amount. the wine was 18 euros so it could have been a very reasonable price, but hey, as our saying went: "We're only in Brussels once.... this year."

We also found that despite the official languages being French, Dutch (Flemish) and German, most people actually understood English, even if they couldn't speak it well. this is a great bonus, it would have been hard had we not been able to communicate with anyone. Often, when walking into a store, the shopkeeper would say "Bonjour! Hello!"

So anyway, About here would be a good time to watch the first video as this is where it finishes.

The videos are edited a bit better than the Japan one - I'm getting better at using Microsoft's movie maker software and we're getting better at taking video... I think... Debbie mostly had the video camera during our time in Belgium and I mostly stuck with old faithful still shots. We've interspersed our talking on the video and some pumping techno in other parts. This is because our mood wasn't a relaxed one it was more excited and energetic throuought the whole three days so the music reflects our mood really :-) I'll also have to warn you that I was attempting to grow a beard over these three days, I've since shaved it off though, I didn't really like it. oh, and I do apologise, it was dificult to get the audio levels consistant and so some bits are quieter than others.

anyway, here it is (it's about 20mb so when opening the page, you may want to press the pause button and go make a cup of tea or something :-) shouldn't take more than 5 minutes or so to download):
Andrew and Debbie Invade Belgium (the movie!) Part1

oh - and when debbie is taking the video at the start and she says it's a beautiful church, it's not actually a church, it's another building of some sort, but we don't really know.... one thing about the towns in Belgium is that normal buildings get made just as beautifully as churches in other countries, and the churches in Belgium are staggeringly beautiful.

yet another small update

2008-04-08T22:52:00.004+01:00

yay! we finally have our internet back!!!!

This is going to be our longest blog post yet in terms of the amount of writing. We've got a whole bunch of video and some photos. I won't put up quite so many photos this time, because you can see them in the video, but I will put up some.

we took over 220 photos and 3hrs of video. I got a bit fed up and managed to find a freeware tool that will resize the photos in a batch, so I don't have to sit there dragging them into an image tool and resizing them individually.

Dispite that though, the next blog will represent over 20hrs of video editing and writing....

The only thing holding it up now is getting debbie to proofread the blog and the time it takes to upload everything!

Watch This Space.

P.S.
Here's some teaser photos to keep you going :-)

Quick update

2008-03-28T16:08:00.002Z

Hi All,

We're back from Belgium and we had an absolute ball!

Unfortunately We're having issues with our home internet so I'm writing this from an internet cafe and so can't spend long.

We took the Eurostar from St Pancras to Brussels - it stopped half-way at Lille, then on the first day it snowed!!!! It is real! Snow Exists! so we eventually found our hotel and checked in. we got a letter saying that our tour to Amsterdam had been cancelled but they'd refund us the money and give us a free additonal tour to Gent and Brugge. in hindsight, we're really glad we went to these towns rather than to amsterdam, they were absolutely beautiful.

We're compiling all our video footage and all our photos etc... It's certainly going to be our longest blog yet. be prepared to put asside about an hour to read it all and watch the video!

Anyway - no photos this blog because the laptop is at home...

Should be up by next week though :-)

until next time gadget...... next time.....

Video!!!!

2008-03-21T16:50:00.005Z

Hey everyone!

It's been a while since I blogged properly. I've been sick the last week and a bit and have only just recovered. People seem to get sick more and take longer to recover over here than in Australia, it must be because of the Cold and lack of sun. Sometimes we go for days or even weeks without seeing the sun at all.

Anyway, so in preparation for a Brussels trip coming up next week I charged up the video camera, thinking that we could take some film anyway, dispite the fact that over the past six months I haven't been able to get it to interface with our computer. So I thought I'd give it one more try anyway, said a quick "God, please let the camera work", plugged it in and *pop* up came the dialogue box asking me what I wanted to do with the mass storage device connected to the computer! wooooo!!!!!! so I don't know what I've changed since last time I tried, we've been through a number of windows updates and I think I may have upgraded the USB drivers at one stage....

What this means is that we now have the ability to share video with you!!!! we havn't taken much arround London, mostly because we didn't know if we could get the camera to work with the computer, but now we can, there'll be heaps more to come.

I've put together a little compilation of us in Japan and our first two days in London. We're both really sorry for making fools of ourselves, our poor camera work, the sea-sickness you'll feel from the wobbleing and the pixelation that occurs when we move the camera too fast. but hopefully it should bring you some joy to see us in the flesh again :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBfv8DDUXms

In other news, We're going to Hillsong London now - we mostly changed back so we can interact with people our own age, All souls tends to cater for an older crowd and we're really missing having friends that we can talk with on the same level.

[Warning: Geekishness ahead!]
Also in other news, I've started to teach myself java. I'm having a bit of fun learning new things with Oracle also. I recently taught myself regular expressions, something that I've been putting off for a very long time, only because they looked complicated. Regular expressions are bits of code that allow pattern matching in text. in normal searching, you try to find an exact match for whatever it is that you type in - so if you wanted to search for a telephone number (for example) you'd probably not be able to find it unless you knew the one you were looking for, but with regular expressions, you can search for a pattern, rather than actual numbers or letters. here's a regex that defines the format for an australian phone number with area code and brackets: /^$\d{2}$\s\d{4}\s\d{4}$/ yay....

this comic was my inspriation to learn:

I've also been having a lot of fun learning new oracle stuff. Got some good advice the other day from one of the more senior members of the forums:

"give a man a fish, you feed him for a day
teach a man to fish, he'll spend all day drunk in a rowboat
beat a man over the head with a fish, he'll leave you alone"

[End Geekishness]

so anyway, not much to report.

oh - one thing - just about 20 mins ago it looked like it was attempting to snow.... these kind of tiny hail-like things fell for about 2 mins with a whole bunch of rain.....

not that we'd know what snow looks like.

in fact, We don't really believe in snow anymore.... we think it's something that people who live in cold climates talk about to make people from warm climates scared..... kind of like we do with the drop bears.....

anyway - see you after belgium!

Happy 27th Birthday Andrew

2008-03-16T17:58:00.005Z

On Wednesday 12 March, Andrew reached the ripe old age of 27! His week didn't start out as one would hope, turning 27, and infact, I even tried to get him to talk about his 27 years of experience on life. What was his motto that he lived by? What new found wisdom did he have? What profound revelations did he have of himself? But instead of his usual eagerness to discuss and contemplate life, he said nothing......

It started out last Saturday morning, the cough I mean. He was running wired temperatures, cold one minute and boiling hot the next. Resting in bed all day, I went around the house busily cleaning and tidying up. Sunday he felt better so we went into the city to go to church. We then walked to the Chinese place to have our usual feast of dumplings. After eating lunch, Andrew started to get tired (as it takes a lot of work to heave down 16 dumplings!) so we headed back home. It was then apparent that he should have stayed home to rest as the flu started to take hold again.

He went into work Monday morning, only to be sent home by his team leader who said he looked really pale (and I think that they all didn't want to catch what Andrew had). He rested all Monday, in between violent coughing which kept me awake most of the night. His only pleasure was opening some early birthday presents of a photo album (complete with photos of his brother Nathan, Jill and little Sophie), masses of Tim Tams/Mint Slice balls, a book, some lovely hankies and a really cool singing birthday card that sings "Andrew, Happy Birthday to you" etc...

Tuesday was like ground hog day as Monday was repeated, except Andrew couldn't even try to make it into work. Andrew would come home and plonk into bed until I called him for dinner, which he wasn't really in the mood for anyway. Tuesday night brought another eventful coughing episode and by now, I was thinking that I would have to resort to drinking coffee to get me through tomorrow.

So Wednesday morning arrives in all it's splendor. I had put a happy birthday banner up in the lounge and put his unopened present from me with his other opened presents from family all together underneath the banner. I kissed him on his forehead and said 'happy birthday sweetie' and made my way to work. Andrew struggled to get out of bed to go to work, still sick, but unfortunately unable to loose another day's pay being sick, he too made his way to work!

I phoned Andrew's work colleagues to make sure that they knew it was his birthday in an effort for them to make him feel a bit special. I also sent him a happy birthday word document with some really tacky happy birthday pictures from the UK clip art folder which I think Andrew appreciated the thought. Well the end of the day came and I went to the shops to make dinner of a simple kind tonight as Andrew was just getting his appetite back. I cooked beef sausages with a potato mash, broccolini and gravy! We both enjoyed it and had strawberries and kiwi fruit for dessert.

He opened up the present I bought him which was an black Oakley T-Shirt. We then watched a DVD called Planet Terror which was a pretty good zombie movie (even though I hate zombie movies). The main actress lost a leg but put a machine gun on the stump so she was able to kill all the zombies with her leg! Very impressive!!! Then off to bed it was for both of us who were pretty exhausted.

But I had to do more than that for Andrew. On Friday night as he was feeling much better by then, I booked a restaurant called Beach Blanket Babylon which a patient from Brisbane had recommended to me before we had left for England. http://www.beachblanket.co.uk. So we hopped on the tube and made our way to Nottinghill Gate and walked for about 5mins until we came to the restaurant. We went through these massive wooden doors to find a very elegant and boroque styled place. We had got there a little early so we had a drink and sat down at a table, next to a beautiful fireplace. Andrew ordered a creamy vanilla martini and I ordered a berry champagne. It was a lovely, eclectic place with the velvet and gold chairs contrasting with the raw brick walls and mosaic artifacts. We then proceeded to our table for dinner. We walked across a wooden plank down a spiral case to be taken inside this white cave like restaurant. There were little alcoves with private booths along the way called the crypt and scullery and candles were lit along the whole way which was so romantic. We were definitely impressed and couldn't wait for dinner.

We ordered lamb and beef for our mains which unfortunately didn't seem to be good as we had hoped they would be. Don't get me wrong. The food was cooked well and was delicious, but it lacked that specialness. Against the surroundings and the price, the food seemed so average. There was even shepherds pie on the menu for the price of 17 pounds. Not to mind, we ordered a cheese platter and a white chocolate creme brulee for dessert. Well, there was only 3 crackers on the plate which I thought was a little cheap. But all in all, we had a lovely night and the service was wonderful and the atmosphere romantic and unique.

After our 2 hours were up, we walked back to the tube station were I tried to squeeze out of Andrew his thoughts on life after turning 27. He said he didn't have any and that was that!!!

He did manage to have some fun this week though as our friend Ed organised an all boys gaming day on Saturday to get out their frustrations and blast monsters, build armies and conquer the world!

Happy Birthday Sweetheart!!!

HUMPED PELICANS!!!!

2008-03-08T15:32:00.001Z

a friend, some shows, a big eye and a food market

2008-02-23T22:48:00.001Z

Hi Everyone!

Quite a bit has happened since the catchup blog. Mika, (one of my groomsmen and a good friend) came to stay with us for a week which was great. He's doing a world tour of sorts and after staying with us he went to the US for a week or so. his main goal in coming over here was to see a whole bunch of plays, musicals, galeries and museums.

An artsy shot of Mika in Piccadilly:

So on the first saturday we all went to see the musical "Wicked".

We got into Leicester square early and bought some cheap tickets (about 20 pounds each) for the show, went and ate dumplings at our favorite resturant in chinatown and then went to see the show at night. The seats that we bought were literally the back row in the cinema so it wasn't that great a view, and then a guy with very bad body odour came and sat directly infront of us - everytime he clapped we got a particularly potent waft of smell floating our way. I wrapped my scarf arround my head for a while towards the beginning and we really didn't envy the lady that had to sit next to him.

anyway - the actual show was absolutely brilliant. although we werent really close enough to see the quality of the acting, the sound was great and the music and lyrics was very well done I thought. there were musical themes that continued througout the show, sometimes in major or minor keys dependant on the situation etc. altogether a very good play. without spoiling the story line, the musical is partially a prequel to and partially occuring parallel to the story of the Wizard of Oz. definately a 10 out of 10 for what we could see. Debbie and I were very impressed and will go again one time :-)

On valentines day, (we didn't plan it to be valentines day for any particular reason, it just happened to be the day we chose) We went with mika to see Ed and Di in canary warf.

so after failing to book, the tapas place where we intended to go to was booked out and all that was left was the set menu for 28 pounds per person. so we went for a bit of a walk:

...and found a good pizza place and had a great meal together:

On the friday night, Mika shouted us to the Lion King musical. We had second row seats in the stalls so we were right up close to the action, although slightly to the side of the stage. I have never really wanted to see this musical, but people keep saying it's really good so I went in fairly optimistic.

I have to say.... The costumes were brilliant, the puppetry was brilliant, the use of the stage and props was brilliant, most of the singing was brilliant, some of the acting was very good, but some of it wasn't. and unfortunately the storyline, although we know it from the movie, seemed to rely on that fact and was perhaps a bit rushed or disjointed or something... there was also no emotion. what I mean by that is for example when the lion king dies it seemed very fake and perhaps even clinical. in hindsight I think that this was perhaps caused because props and all the fantastic stuff on the stage seemed to detract from the meaningfullness of the situation.... also some of the songs that weren't in the film seemed to be put in there just for the sake of it. "oh, well, I guess we should have a song about now so here goes...." Simba's song where he sings about how he misses his father etc is just rubbish: the entire musical is set with an african theme which makes for some absolutely awesome african harmonys and great cross-rythmns, but simba's song was certainly not written by a black man (excuse the political non-correctness), it was more like a traditional church hymn, and really broke the flow of the whole thing.

Not having seen all that many musicals in my life, I'd actually rate the lion king fairly low. go see it for the spectacular sets and props and stuff, but it's not all that brilliant as people say.

So to rate all the musicals I've seen in order of coolness.

Pirates of penzance (also performed it when a bit younger, I was a police dude)
Les Miserables
Wicked
Mikado (also performed at one stage I think? or was it Nathan that did it and I watched?)
The Lion King
Oliver (performed only, not watched, I was a homeless kid)

anyway - so here's a shot of Mika and I, both fairly tired on the tube on the way home:

So on the saturday morning afterwards, we went on the London Eye! for 15 pounds each (sorry I'm not using the pound symbol, it's not on my keyboard...) we got a 30 minute trip - it was very cool:

debbie to preparing herself for the trip:

here's a shot of the city:

you can see st paul's cathedral to the left and the gherkin to the right.

the BT tower:

and us of course:

here's a shot of westend:

Debbie's building is the middle one (kind of looks like a couple of buildings but it's really one with a few tower like things.

here's an attempt to get Nelson's column and regent street in, but it didn't turn out that well - I should have just focused on trafalga square.. anyway, you can see the column there :-)

then we hit the top of the ride:

and on the other side there was some good shots of buckingham palace:

and the houses of parliment:

looking up at the other pods:

and of course, we should feel very secure as the london eye appears to be held together with duct tape:

attempt at artsy shot with big ben between us:

and finally a snap of a Dali sculpture on the way down:

After the Eye, Debbie and I had lunch with our friends that we stayed with when we first came over at a Vegetarian resturant at tooting. now we were both thinking... "vegetarian....what could possibly be tasty about that?" but as we very quickly realised, vegetarians certainly can cook."Kastoori" is now on our list of favourite resturants in London and if you come over here, and appreciate really good food, we'll have to take you!

The following weekend (today) we went to the Borough market. This market is one that will inspire even the most McDonalds loving person to want to cook and eat good food. The market is entirely fresh food and has 5 or 6 stalls just selling different cheeses, about the same number selling only olivs, some just selling fruit and veggies, there was one selling truffles and truffle related products such as truffle olive-oil, truffle based sauces, pesto-like mushroom and truffle mash. Neither of us have ever smelled or tasted truffle before so this was an eye opener. they had some black truffles in a bowl with a lid that had a sign saying "smell me" so we did. and it was amazing. I've watched those cooking shows where the cook smells the truffle and tries to discribe it, and I've thought, ok, surely it's an acquired smell or he only appreciates it as much as he appears to because he's a cook. but seriously, it's amazing. it's earthy but slightly sweet, it's entirely unlike anything I've ever smelled before. We tried some bread with truffle based olive oil, it was really tasty!

we bought some fresh burgers for lunch, debbie had a chicken one with salad and I had a venison one with some fresh blue cheese, onions and english mustard - very very tasty.

so at the end of the day we came home with this stash:

from left to right:
A mediteranian chutney
Some green olives with parsley, tarragon, lemon and olive oil
"Truffled sauce" (mushrooms, black olives, summer truffle, extra virgin olive oil, salt and herbs)
A slice of cheese that we cant remember the name of and couldn't pronounce anyway.

The olives were amazing! we'll have to go back and get more and try all the different types. we havn't yet tried the truffled sauce, but the idea is to make some pasta and mix it in with some olive oil, so we'll probably try it this week.

the chutney is really fresh also, very tasty. the cheese is a very rich, flaky one - very cool.

we could have spent so much money just buying amazing quality food at the markets, but we had to restrain ourselves, we're on a bit of a budget at the moment :-)

anyway - so there's another thing to add to the list of things that are really great to do over here.

oh, and after stepping out of the markets, we saw an Ariel Atom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Atom

a very cool go-cart for grown ups :D

That's all folks!

Leeds Castle (Catchup blog 3 of 3)

2008-02-04T19:11:00.000Z

Hi all,

This is the third part in a series of blogs that we've put together over a weekend. I recomend you read the first two first.

a Swanset:

a spot of morbidity:

Now we continue with our usual program

--------------------------------------------

"Wonderful in manifold glories are the great castle visions of europe; Windsor from the Thames, Warwick or Ludlow from their riversides, Conway or Caernarvon from the sea, Amboise from the Loire, Aigues Mortes from the lagoons, Carcassonne, Coucy, Falaise and Chateau Gaillard - Beautiful as they are crowned with praise, they are not comparable in beauty as with Leeds, beheld among the waters on an autumnal evening when the bracken is golden and there is a faint blue mist among the trees - the loveliest castle, as thus beheld, in the whole world" - Lord Conway

An hour and a half coach trip to the south east of London is Leeds castle.
Link to Google maps (click me)

So we got up bright and early on sunday morning, ate breakfast and set off for victoria coach station in the centre of London. It was Debbie's idea. basically we're sick of just hanging arround doing nothing on the weekends. having been sick and having had a few late night we've mostly just been sleeping in on the weekends. Not this one though! yesterday was Highgate cemetery and today we made our first venture outside the M25 wooo!

I must pre-warn you, Debbie and I have both fallen in love with the various wildlife found around the place. So we've probably taken more photos of birds than you may have yourself, but hey... it's our blog, we can do what we want!

At the castle, we were greeted by the guard of course:

and the resident butler, Henry.

They both gave us a very thorough inspection to ensure that we were the sort of people that should be allowed through and decided that yes, we were. the guard then shouted for the gates to be open and we were in:

There's about a 150 meter walk from the entrance to the castle. there's a duckery, streems and pools of water, heaps of birds, nice little foot bridges and rolling hills.

We loved this one:

don't really know what it is, but it looks very cool.

and we found an ugly duckling!

one day this one will turn out to be a beautiful swan. although not being expert birdists we're not sure if it will be white or black. the most recent private owner of Leeds castle was extremely fond of birds and was the first person to import black swans from Australia to the UK. they've since become a symbol of the castle and can be found pretty much anywhere you look around the grounds:

And so finally the castle itself comes into view:

don't blame me for that shot, debbie took it. I said "come over here where the tree's not blocking the view" and she mumbled something and just went and took it anyway... oh well, it just serves to tantilise you :-)

so then she took a photo of me:

Debbie said I look boring when standing normally so I stuck my arms out, hoping to aleviate the bordom I'm sure you all feel right now. :-)

the castle gradually got closer:

it seemed like a long walk, but we were enjoying ourselves and the countryside.

Finally ariving at the main gates of the castle.

The stone bridge that we're standing on was originally a wooden drawbridge, but was turned into the way it is now by subsequent monarchs and lords as the need for fortifications (or rather the ability for castles to provide it against firarms) reduced.

there were two entry ways, I couldn't really get my head around it, but basically on the mainland there was a fortified Mill so the castle could make bread from the grain stores during a seige. it's not used anymore so this part had fallen into the most disrepair:

there was also a second drawbridge near the mill. here's me apparently being boring:

and here's me trying my hardest not to be boring:

and debbie doing a better job:

maybe debbie looks better in shots because I actually warn her before I take them? unlike this:

Which is the entry to the mill from the castle.

I had to stick this one in :-) Debbie looks so cute when she's blowing her nose...... awwww

The castle is built on two islands surrounded by a man made moat. the first island is the biggest and has a great courtyard:

This whole area used to be enclosed by high walls, but these were knocked down by Henry VIII because the castle by then had turned into more of a banqueting house than a useable fortress.

continuing down to the right we got our first glimpse of the second island. this one has all the royal residences and that kind of thing. this is pretty much the only original bit of stone masonry apart from the foundations. the rest of the castle's buildings have been torn down and replaced at various points in history.

The bridge behind debbie here also used to be a wooden drawbridge but was replaced by a three story stone one by some other monarch or lord at some stage.

the view up to the left:

The castle is still currently used for guests and conferences. and so all us lowly tourists must enter through the cellar:

which wasn't all that bad of course. There are rooms going off to the side that have wine etc in them but these barrels are just for display.

Inside the castle, most hallways and staircases have armor and weapons on them:

All the furnishings on the lower floors are designed to look like they would have when the castle was built, however late Lady Baillie, the most recent private owner, has seen fit to refurbish quite a lot of it with new fangled things like electricity and central heating so it's not all coats of armor and swords.

most of the ceilings in the main keep had carved wooden beams like this:

The bookshelves in the Library here were boarded up during WWII to prevent damage, and the room was converted to an emergency medical centre for those wounded during air raids.

The oldest book in the room is an original copy of "The Arcadia" by Sir Philip Sidney, and dates to the early 1600's. don't ask me what's so special about that book, I've never read it or heard of Philip Sidney, but it's just a useless factoid for you to store for later. Just think, one day when you're on Who wants to be a millionare, the million dollar question will be "what's the oldest book stored in the Library of Leeds castle?" and when you win, you can share it with us.

Next we found ourselves out the front again:

It's of course small compared to Hampton court palace, but that suited us fine because we've already experienced a couple of palaces, we were quite happy with the size of this one. Hampton court is a banquet, whereas Leeds castle is more like a small meal where, when you've finished, you're not entirely stuffed with food, but you're just about perfectly satisfied but still ready for desert.

So in preparation for the next course, we attempted to perfect our couple-shot taking abillity.

I think the trick is to aim lower than you think it should be.

Leeds castle has a hedge maze which we were certainly eager to try. On the way we met some of the natives.

our personal Native Liason, Bluey (he's from Australia)

... told us that we were very lucky, we were about to witness a bit of a biff between three rival males. Sure enough, a contest to see who was the toughest broke out with some spectacular displays of neck curvage and plumage ruffling:

the brawl that ensued was too horifying for words:

Thankfully they were all feather weights so no one got really hurt.

On a more serious note, another couple walking allong managed to anger one swan who charged them. Dispite their beauty, they can be pretty intimidating birds when they want to be. Especially so due to their beaks being at almost exactly groin height on a fully grown human male..... we were able to get close, but were careful not to crowd them too much.

once again, we attempted a couple-shot:

on our way to the maze there were a bunch of cotteges:

which had a dog collar museum (which neither of us was interested in), and a cafe/resturant (which both of us were eager for). so after a warming soup, coffee, tea and banana cake we headded off again.

We witnessed a close call as members of rival swan factions passed eachother without incident:

Took a photo of this particularly beautiful bird:

We walked past an avery and a medieval style playground with wooden forts and swings and a jousting arena "a flying fox" etc. finally we hit the maze! we were so excited that we didn't take a photo outside, but we jumped in, ready to attack it!

unfortunately, unlike the labyrinth at Hampton court, this one was a proper maze and proved quite a bit more dificult.

you can see the layout on google maps:
here

But eventually we reached the stone tower in the centre:

From where we had a great view over the maze:

curiously, at the top there was a hole like thing with running water sounds comming from the bottom. it looked like a two story drop to the bottom:

it turned out that the way out of the maze was actually underneath. When the maze was built, they also built a "grotto" underneath:

with some mythical dude built into the wall:

and the ceiling and walls covered with intricate shell work:

and it went down another level:

and ended in a statue of a green man:

so we shrugged and went outside to sit on the hill for a bit.

this is me doing a james bond shooting impression (you know the opening credits):

we admired the forest in the background:

it was still pretty cold.

finaly after sitting for a bit we meandered back through the avery:
we thought these guys were very patriotic, displaying the Aussie colours for us:

Toucans!

I never realised how hard it was for these guys to preen themselves with their huge beaks!

and that there are black beaked toucans also:

and so back to the bus. one last look at the castle:

and another attempt at a couple-shot:

and a totally white peacock!

Well, that's it folks - I've got no witty comments left after writing these three posts so I'll just say...

until next time Gadget..... next time....

a spot of morbidity (Catchup blog 2 of 3)

2008-02-03T23:39:00.000Z

So as a spur of the moment thing on Saturday, we decided we'd take a trip to Highgate cemetery.

It's a little bit morbid, but I have to say that I enjoy going to cemeteries. perhaps "enjoy" is the wrong word. more like, I find it facinating, interesting, peaceful and somewhat meditational I guess you could say.

I like looking at the inscriptions on the monuments, I find it interesting to see the state of repair that they get into. sometimes you'll find the lowliest gravestone, perfectly kept, with only few day old flowers left there, whereas the most expensive, elaborate monuments are broken and overgrown with moss and weeds.

The reason we chose Highgate is I've been reading about London's history of burial in a book called "Necropolis: London and its dead". now I didn't pick this particular book because I'm some death-loving morbid goth who skulks around wearing all black. I chose it beause it goes through the history of London, from the time of the Romans all the way through to modern day, looking at how the population deals with their dead. during the great plague times for example, people were thrown into mass graves. there's a obvious bend in the underground train line between two direct points just south of hyde park because the tunneling equipment couldn't cope with the masses of compacted skeletons blocking the way. it had to dig arround it.

Basically the story of Highgate Cemetery goes: Back in the early 1800's, the traditional graveyards attached to individual churches were unable to cope with the population explosion and the number of burials occuring posed a health hazard. and so a number of public cemetaries were commissioned. Highgate was just one of seven that were opened during the early to mid 1800s.

Highgate is situated on a hill. It seems to be pretty much the only hill arround. to get to the cemetery we had to go through Waterlow park. a very nice park with actual hills and a nice view of the city:

you can barely see the BT tower in the following photo

Here's debbie in her new sleeping bag that she bought late last year. no more rugging up with multiple scarves!

The cemetery is split into two halves, east and west. The eastern side was the slightly poorer side, consisting of layers and layers of individual graves. We went there first.

It started out really normal. although the density of graves was higher than we've seen at Toowong Cemetery, it so far looked like a fairly normal graveyard. there were a couple of large monuments:

And quite a few nice sculptures:

First port of call was Karl Marx's grave:

which was one of the few that we had planned on seeing. Not that we're devotee's of comunism, but I just wanted to see it because he's famous. there were another couple there who were obvious fans and a whole bunch of flowers and mementos were left at the base of the monument. The enscription says (sorry for the poor quality photo): "Workers of all lands unite. The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however, is to change it." his wife, daughter and grandson are also buried here and there is a plaque inset into the main monument detailing when they died etc.

After this, and the further away from the main entrance we got, the worse the state of the graveyard became.

Basically just before WWII, the cemetery ceased to be financially viable and only one caretaker was left to look after all the monuments.

You can see the cemetery owners struggling for cash. they've piled grave apon grave in such away that you cannot get to a lot of them without stepping on other graves:

There were new graves mixed in with the old. as long-held family plots finally filled up. This one here was only placed there last year, whereas the one behind it was 100 years old and the one behind that was too overgrown and worn that I couldn't read it:

Some areas are so thick with both gravestones and underbrush that they're impossible to access without a machette (which I didn't have handy) and an Indiana Jones style bull whip:

We did find what may have been a distant relative?

There were paths all over the place, most of which looked like something out of the movie Sleepy Hollow:

Some were too muddy to walk down:

Some places it got quite spooky. this tree here was actually creaking in the wind like a wooden door left open:

Here was a sad one:

The family of this person had obviously arrived on the same day we did. they'd placed hundreds of pounds worth of flowers and birthday cards and gifts. the heart shaped thing at the back is made up solid of live roses.

I think one of the reasons that I do like cemeteries though is because of my appreciation of irony:

the inscription reads: "In loving memory of Issachar Zacharie M.D. first Grand Supreme Ruler of the Masonic Order of the Secret Monitor within the British Empire yada yada...."

So remind me when eventually I rule the world to call myself something like "the First Grand Supreme Excelent Bestest Awesomest Dude of the Totaly Amazing order of World Ruleage" or something as equally pompus It seems the done thing arround this part of the world.

At least one person seemed to appreciate (or used to appreciate) the pointlessness of self-gratifying inscriptions and just said what everyone's thinking anyway:

There was nothing else written on the above grave. no name, nothing.

Next up was the western half of the cemetery.

This part, due to the precarious state of a lot of the monuments, was only accessable by guided tour. and although I love exploring, we were very glad of the tour guide. partially because without here I probably would have gone and fallen through some ancient masonary, but mostly because she provided an insight that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

There are many beautiful sculptures in this half of the cemetery. the tour guide said that there was one scupturer who died and was buried in this part, who scuplted one particular famous sculpture of an angel. the people tasked with looking after the cemetery once it reopened in 1981 knew it was here, but couldn't find it. eventually it was found, the reason it was missed was because it was so overgrown with vines, they actually thought it was a tree. there are still many many monuments around the place that are nearly entirely encased in vines and leaves.

here was the main courtyard:

This wall was lined with niches for cremation urns. Here's an example:

Here's debbie sitting under the war memorial waiting for the tour guide:

behind us were the two chapels:

These two chapels (one on the left, one on the right, joined with the big pointy bit in the middle) were built for Anglicans (on the right) and Dissenters (everyone else, on the left). Apparently in Victorian times, the commonly held belief was that a dead Anglican must be buried on consecrated ground and so half the cemetery was concecrated and half was not (for everyone else). moreover once an anglican body had passed onto consecrated ground, it could not leave. This however, posed a problem because those that couldn't afford to be buried in the more expensive western side had to be carried over the road to the eastern side. And (so we were told) it is pretty much impossible to consecrate a road. so what to do, what to do...? "of course!" they said. and then went about doing the obvious thing of building a series of hydraulic lifts, a tunnel underneath the road and then consecrating the tunnel.

So there are somewhat less photos this section due to the fact that we were walking at the guide's pace and mostly listening to her. if we stopped to take photos we got left behind and missed interesting tidbits of information, so we attempted to maintain a ballance. often though we were so engrossed in what the guide was saying that we forgot the whole photo thing unfortunately.

There were many large monuments like this:

and the pathways were wider and more organised:

I asked why some monuments (like the above) said "family Crypt" when there was quite obviously only rooom for one or two people. the guide said that most people with the larger monuments also owned the ground on the path and that if you dig up the path you'll find steps leading down into rooms up to 20 feet underground with shelves on each wall, with enough room for whole families and their decendants. I was beginning to understand why the tour guide was necessary. I didn't have any wish to fall through the ground into a mass grave.

here's an example of one:

see the stones at the front have come away. they are designed to. one would remove them, and dig away the ground to reveal the steps going down to the crypt. most of these would then also have a locked iron door which would be opened ceremoniously to accept the next coffin. same deal with the grave just to the left.

you can see the plaque on the headstone has a very long list of names of all the people laid to rest here. On this one I counted 13 names. and just to emphasise the point... due to the victorian aversion to cremation, these would have all been coffins, indicating that there would be a large vault underneath, extending down deep and into the hillside. This grave site was tiny compared to others we saw.

there were quite a few different sort of headstones:

Then we came to the famous "Circle of Lebanon":

The reason it's called the circle of Lebanon is firstly because it's circular... and secondly because there's a large Lebonese cedar growing in the middle:

The story goes that when these grounds were converted into a cemetery, the landscapers decided to create a feature arround the reletively newly planted cedar. now the thing is with plants from that part of the world is that they don't generally fare all that well in the weather that we have here. their roots tend to grow outwards and the trees are easily blown over by high winds. but with this one, it's been planted in what is essentially a giant plant pot, thus forcing its roots downwards, and so it has lasted a few hundred years.

the main entrance to this was actually one level down:

So we went around and down and found the proper entrance:

I didn't manage to get it in the photo, but there are obilisks on either side, just outside the frame that are twice as high as the wall.

The guide explained that there were various trends in burials. there was the "neo-classical revival", the "gothic revival" and the "egyptomania" (yes, that's the proper word for it, I didn't make it up). so a lot of the tombs reflect the trend at the time.

here's the circle from the ground:

Every one of these doors had two torches depcted upside down as a symbol of life extinguished:

That's about it really. we passed by quite a few other far more impressive crypts but I totally forgot to take photos because of the commentary that the guide was giving. one particular moresaleum was built by a wealthy man for his 8 year old daughter, with a solid marble interior and a 3 story high roof covered in gold at a cost (in todays money) of about 3 million pounds. they got quite a bit of use out of it though as the rest of the family was also buried in there later on. waste not, want not I guess.

on arriving home however I realised that we had missed two graves that I had wanted to visit. douglas adams (wrote hich hikers guide to the Galaxy) and Michael Faraday (discovered electromagnetic induction), I really wanted to see if the rumours were true about him rolling over in his grave and producing a voltage :-).

So anyway, that's the end of this post - sorry for the morbidity - hopefully the next post will cheer you up, because on Sunday we went to Leeds Castle!!!! yay!

pictures on their way :-D

Andrew.

a Swanset (Catchup blog 1 of 3)

2008-02-03T20:23:00.000Z

So in autumn we went again to hyde park. I know we've been there quite often and honestly we havn't been back much since, but it was the first time we both went with the sole purpose of just hanging arround looking at the view. for the first time ever, we saw swans in all their glory and instantly fell in love with them. we didn't know they actually did arc their wings like you see in pictures and sculptures!

There's nothing much else to say so we'll let the pictures do the talking:

yes, it was cold.

after all this looking at birds, we had to go and run arround in the leaves - they were shin deep in some places!

and we decided that debbie couldn't take photos in the dark:

That's all!

Instant Blogification

2008-01-21T18:24:00.000Z

Hi All,

just a quick update. been feeling guilty having not posted a blog entry since before Christmas.

We've done the following:

We both got sick for about a week and a half
We bought a smaller magnetic chess set and have played a few times in coffee shops in west end etc :-) debbie is learning not to stress about it and is playing both better and faster! (I'm going to have to practice now)
We found a new favorite Resturant (www.pasha-restaurant.co.uk)
Debbie and I went rollerblading in hyde park (and yes! debbie bladed by herself!)
We had dinner with Ed.
Booked two holidays: Belgium and holland in march (just for 3 nights) and France in June for 7 nights for when my Mum and Dad and Nathan and Jill and Sophie come over.
Debbie's read "the picture of Dorian Gray" her first bit of "literature" for about a year. (not that I've been reading anything special lately)
Andrew's become flavour of the month at work due to one-upping the senior analyst-programmer on a number of technical matters.
Debbie is learning to "chill" in general. trying to think positively and look at the good things in life rather than focus on everything that hasn't been done and needs to be done.
had a number of outings to our local park and watched ducks, swans and other weird birds that we don't know what they are play arround.
We went to the National Portrait gallery (linky)

This is about to happen:

Mika is comming over to stay for a few nights on the 8th of feb.
Ed's birthday party is this weekend (james bond theme at the very posh Artesian Bar)
We're going to Belgium! on the 24th of march, staying in brussels for three nights with a day trip to Amsterdam. it's not exactly the longest holiday but we're saving up for the long break in Jun.
A blog post with some photos of hyde park that we havn't posted since we took them late last year.
A trip to Winsor castle! (to be planned for sometime in February).

That's about all folks! next post will have photos we promise!

A.

Palaces in the Mist

2007-12-26T16:48:00.000Z

Wow, well, a lot has happened since last blog post. We've been to Hyde park (again) took some really nice photos there, been to Hampton court palace, seen phantom of the opera and had Christmas!

because it literally takes hours to reduce all the photos to an appropriate size and write the blogs and post it, we're going to be a little bit behind. First of all though, we'd like to thank everyone for their Christmas wishes and for the presents (and the thoughts that count) We had a nice Christmas eve calling everyone - we stayed up until 2am calling people, so on Christmas day we ended up sleeping in until 12:30pm!

We'll write another post about Christmas, but first we wanted to show you what we saw at Hampton court palace. we took nearly 200 photos but have had to select the best ones for here. it is still the largest post we have made so far. We hope you like it :D

---------------

I'm sitting here on the futon, warm and snug with the central heating on a mug of mulled wine beside me and a contented smile on my face.

Today was one of the best days since coming to London. Today we went to Hampton Court Palace. sounds like the normal touristy thing to do? well, yes, but what a day:

Debbie writes

We got up at 7am and put our new merino thermals on as well as socks, skivvy's, jumpers, scarfs, gloves, hats/beanies, shoes/boots hankies and lip balm. We ate some toast and bundled out the door, looking forward to seeing King Henry VIII's Palace.

As soon as we stepped outside our front door, we were enveloped with a thick and eery yet strangely peaceful mist. It was cold, but our newly purchased merino wool thermals didn't let the mist creep in one bit. We were toasty warm! After strolling down our misty street, we jumped on the overland train to Hampton Court. Andrew was so excited that I was on the national rail with him as he travels on it all the time for work, and this was my first time on it! Normally you are able to see for miles over the tops of houses, but because of the fog it we couldn't see past the first row. Also unfortunately, there was no frost on the roof tops like there normally is, but it was still exciting to see parks and the different houses compared to those closer in the city. They have much larger backyards and the houses aren't joined. It felt like a real treat to actually see something on the train, other than just the people boarding and squeezing in, like they do on the tube.

So we arrive at Hampton Court station and see that we need to walk across a bridge to get to Hampton Court Palace. The mist was still so thick that we couldn't see the Thames at all! We arrived early and had a bit of a sticky beak, before we needed to line up to collect our tickets.

It was so peaceful and serene here and with the all the mist around. It felt like we were in a bit of a fairy tale. I could imagine a dragon coming out of the swamp at any moment and breathing his fire on us, but then in a blink of an eye, my knight in shining armour rescues me but cutting off the dragon's head with his grandfather's sword....shing......

Swamp (Thames):

knight in shining armor (Andrew):

eery swamp monster tree thing:

Anyway, it was time to line up for our tickets and to go ice skating! We had booked ourselves in for the very first session at 10am-11am. We were given these fluro orange ice skating boots which were not as heavy as I thought ice skating boots were (8 years ago). We then waited in line and Andrew was trying to calm my fears by telling how great i was doing for standing up in them! He wasn't helping. Finally after about 10mins we were let onto the ice. We were the first group on for the day, so at least I was looking forward to a smoothish ride. We stepped out onto the ice and I Clung to the side rail for dear life. "I don't remember ice skating to be this slippery!" Andrew stayed with me for the first, very long lap and then he was off to find his feet of also not skating for 8 or so years. He lapped me many times until I was ready to hold both his hand, and the railing. After a few circuits, I stepped off to have a rest.

I've never left the side rail and I really didn't want to leave the rink for the day without having skated by myself. So I was psyching myself up for another go and then I notice Andrew zooming past, so effortlessly. He's got the side step footwork going and even maneuvers round other skaters, like he's always skated all of his life. I was stunned! I was proud! I thought, I can't let him down! He's been wanting to skate together since December's open air skate rinks started. So I called him over and said that I'm ready to go out again, but this time without the side rail and just his hand. Well, this was getting a bit easier and my balance was improving and we were having fun and laughing. We weren't going fast but it was fast enough. I was starting to get the same feet technique and then something amazing happened, I didn't need to hold Andrew's hand anymore. In fact, It felt worse to hold his hand. I was doing it on my own. I was officially...SKATING :-D Yipee!!! I did a few more laps and then had to have a break as this was so mentally challenging for me. Andrew stayed on the ice going a million miles an hour. After feeling more confident and ready to do it again, I got back on and yes, I could still skate by myself. We formed a train and Andrew was giving me a taste of real speed, until he lost control and we both fell over! It was hilarious! Even more so watching us trying to get up! We had a wonderful time skating and after getting off the ice, we rewarded ourselves with a hot chocolate with whipped cream!

Andrew writes
Wow! Debbie was skating! I can't begin to describe how happy I was and how proud! Not so much the fact that she can skate now (sort of) but that she got a second time to give it another go rather than giving up after a short time. the determination that she showed certainly paid off and now we can skate together! Next stop: Rollerblading! The whole experience was picturesque, ice skating with a magnificent castle emerging from the mist in the background.

Well, after warming ourselves with a Hot Chocolate and a hot dog, we made our way to the Royal residence of "King Henry, Eighth of that name".

Debbie of course started to go crazy with the camera, there were quite a few shots she took here all of the same thing so I haven't included them all.

here I'm thinking: come on, enough with the photos, let's actually go inside...

so after one last shot with the warder:

We finally went inside the palace.

It is almost certainly the most magnificent palace we've visited and by far the largest. the shear number of halls and public drawing rooms and private (privy) drawing rooms and bed rooms (also both public like the french and private like all other normal people) and presence rooms and watching (guard) rooms and grand staircases and kitchens and wine cellars and courtyards and more staircases and chapels and great halls was staggering. to tell the truth, by the end of the day we got a bit blase about it: "oh, yet another kings gallery... great. oh look, yet another hall lined with 5 hundred year old tapestries woven with real silver and gold thread depicting the biblical story of Abraham that cost as much to make at the time as building a fully armed battleship...." don't get us wrong though - it was absolutely magnificent. it was however the little mundane things that got our attention like the original oak staircase that the servants walked up, carrying food for the king and the secret passages behind the tapestries, and the cool bedside operated locks on the doors to the queen's bedroom, and the King's velvet lined toilet seat.

One room that we were particularly impressed with was the guard room for King William the somthingth. when the King was in residence, 40 Yeoman guards lined the walls of this room and above them the walls were lined with weapons arrayed in beautiful patterns, artistic, yet militarily functional.

We weren't allowed to take photos inside unfortunately but we did take a few shots at the entrance and in some of the courtyards.

While walking around inside, We were absolutely stunned, by the gardens visible through the windows. The view out of every room was amazing. At about 2:00pm we finally got out of the palaces and into the gardens. These were beautiful, but the were made even more so because of the mist! trees carried on for literally as far as the eye could see, ponds of water appeared out of the mist as we walked towards them. Statues lining the pavement materialised from thin air. it's impossible to convey what it was like, but here are some shots to help:

We almost certainly didn't see all the gardens, but one thing we had to do was see the Maze, originally laid out by the big King H himself. I had read that for this particular one, actually being a labyrinth rather than a maze, one merely has to keep one's hand on one wall and it will lead you to the centre and back out again.

so off we went, right hand on the wall:

Me, pretending to be lost:

Success!!

And then back out again:

After the maze, we wandered aimlessly, hopelessly lost in the dense fog... (not really, but it sounded good).

Found this cool paved path which debbie immediately ran down with excitement:

so we took some artsy shots:

Saw a red robin:

took some artsy shots of some holly:

found some cool drooping trees:

and when debbie bent down:

she found some real frozen water!

and a bridge:

We think these seagulls were stuck to the ice...

spotted the less glamerous end of a swan:

admired the cool bark of this tree:

Were stunned by the rows of manacured garden trees:

some cool gold plated gates with hereldric symbols
the tudor coat of arms:

thistle of some sort:

a really cool vine archway commissioned by QEII:
(AKA the TUNNEL OF DEATH!!!)

Debbie steps fearlessly into the Tunnel Of Death!!

Some really beautiful sunken gardens with sculptured plants:

an orangery:

This statue was just oozing symbolism. we named him "Vincent":

This statue was a bit more layed back. we named him "Og".

above all the windows on the outside were heraldric symbals, to many to take photos of, but here's one from William the somethingth:

one more shot of the palace in the mist:

and back out to the front courtyard (from the inside facing out):

this brought us to 4:00 in the afternoon. time to go home for some hot roast pork and a long blog-writing session :-D

Kew Gardens and a Cityscape

2007-12-16T00:27:00.000Z

Hi all,

So we did actually end up going somewhere this weekend! on Saturday we went to Kew gardens. they have an ice skating rink and lots of botanical gardens and some Christmas stalls and a carols by candlelight type thing. Unfortunately there's only a couple of photos that we have to share.

the reason is, it's getting REALLY cold. so cold in-fact, that I'd like to amend my previous advice to stay here to see the winter in to: "you absolutely must stay for the first week of December.... then you absolutely must get out of here and back to a warm country as fast as you possibly can".

anyway, so kew gardens - very nice, very cold. it hurt to take my hands out of the gloves to take the photos... so much so that for most cool photo opportunities the conversation went like this:

Debbie: ooo, that would make a lovely photo
Andrew: yeah...
Debbie: Can we take a photo?
Andrew: sure... you can get the camera out of the bag if you like.
Debbie: *pause* Nah...forget it.
Andrew: yep....

Anyway, the couple of photos that I did take were of Debbie all rugged up:

so anyway, last weekend we didn't to anything of note at all: I was tired from the Christmas party on the Friday night and Debbie had a migraine for almost the entire weekend, so we didn't go anywhere. besides, it was raining so it was probably good that we stayed in. so since there's a lack of photos from the weekend, I thought I'd share something I've been working on for a while now:

London Cityscape Project:

Since coming to London, I've loved the different types of buildings. I tend to just look up a lot when walking around. the roofs are different, there's chimneys, Tudor style buildings, curvy streets. I guess if you lived here for most of your life you wouldn't think it's anything special, but coming from a comparatively modern city there's some very cool architecture here.

So I've been compiling nice shots of the streets and tops of buildings. it doesn't really interest Debbie at all, so I hope that it's not too boring for you but I've stuck them all into a little video and put it to some nice music, like the one we did of the Tower of London. most of it is photos that you haven't seen before but I have included some that we've put on the blog before. I hope you like it.

By the way, I got feed back from the last video that the shots flipped through too fast. the only thing is that Debbie told me this AFTER I had spent over 2hrs putting this one together, so if you miss anything or want to see the photos slowly, you're going to have to pause it and restart it, or just watch it a few times over :-D

Also just to be a bit different, I've flipped one shot around so that the cars are driving on the wrong side of the road - see if you can pick it!

so turn up your sound, and sit back and watch:

if you're having trouble viewing the above, CLICK ME .

(remember you can hit the full screen button on the bottom right of the video section of the page to make it full screen and hit escape to get normality back again. (the full screen thing only works however if you actually go to youtube by clicking on the "click me" above... complicated enough for you?)).

Lots of love,
Andrew & Debbie

A Mid-Week Multi-Part Photo Bonanza!

2007-12-05T22:36:00.000Z

Hi Everyone!

Today is a multi-part mid-week photoblog post!

PART ZERO: First things first; a postcard

As we mentioned last time, we had a bit of a rushed time getting all our presents off last saturday. one of the things that we didn't write on and send was a postcard with piccadilly circus on it. it's quite cool, so I took a photo of it to show you:

yes, I could have just posted it here taken credit for the shot but I'm an honest guy. and yes, everything is black and white over here except the busses.

blogger doesn't let me post photos larger on the screen, but if you right click on the photo that you want to see and click "view image" it will display it at it's proper resolution. this goes for any photo on our blog by the way. try it with a couple of the following ones.

PART ONE: A beautiful park for lunch

First of all, I've just finished a three-day training course in the city: Implementing Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services. riviting stuff.... no, really, it is.

so anyway, I had to take a trip into the city each day. that's the city proper, not west end. lots of business people wearing suits on the tube and here's me wearing jeans and a t-shirt.... oh well :-)

here's the google map link to the approximate area:
Click
you can see St Paul's down the bottom right. and chancery lane top left (I was here). zoom out a bit to see where it is in relationship to everything else.

It's really different from the suburbs that we live in and the west end that debbie works in and we go to every now and then for dinner etc. the buildings are different, it's hard to discribe, but they seem older or less organised or something, more stately even, dispite the fact that this was the poorer end of town a hundred years ago or so.

I caught the train to bank station and then changed lines but the central line had a broken down train, so after waiting arround for 15 mins I decided to hike it. the only reason I waited that long was because I only had a vague Idea of which direction to go. I knew it was north westish, that was it. in hindsight all I needed to do was to walk down the one street from Bank to chancery lane and that was fine, but I didn't know this so I ended up going arround quite a few back streets. still, now I know the area fairly well. and the cool thing was I got to walk past part of the old London wall that was built progressivly by the Normon monarchs shortly after wiliam the conquerer.

anyway, without boring you about the course, on tuesday I bought a lentil and bacon soup from the corner cafe and went for a bit of a walk, thinking that there must be a park nearby. and there was, and it was very cool. so today (wednesday) I took the camera, bought another soup and went for another walk.... here's the result:

map:
Click

This is a marble statue that says:
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties. Men must persue things which are just in present and leave the future to devine providence." don't know who put it there or why, and I thought it was a bit deep for a lunchtime stroll in the park but I took a photo anyway ;-).

PART TWO: Never pay full price.

So after eating my soup I strolled on down to the leather lane markets. these markets have been setting up here nearly every day since about a hundred years before Australia was discovered. I really like these - they're smallish, the stall owners aren't pushy and the goods are a great price and good quality.

here's a small comparison of the exact same product in different locations:
Mens Cotton Scarff:
High street: £15-£50 depending on if you want brand name or not. if you want brand name cashmere then we've seen prices over £200.
discount store: £5
Leather lane market: £2.50

High quality wool Beanie:
High street: £15
Army disposals: £4
Leather lane market £3.50

Mens Long johns and thermal top:
High street: £12 per part
Leather lane market: £4 each or £7 for matching top and bottom

Leather Gloves:
High street: £30 - £70 (bought a £30 pair with low quality leather, have seen good quality but thin hugo boss ones for £50 out in croydon and £69 on oxford street)
Fur stall with non-english speaking dude from sweden: £15 for thick high quality leather and reindeer fur lining!!!!

same guy was also selling £50 reindeer fur rugs with fur so thick you can literally bury your fingers in it. it's glorious, I'd buy one but we just don't have anywhere to put a reindeer fur rug at the moment.... and in any case, I'd rather hang it up than walk on it......

so here it is:
£31.50 for two scarves, good quality benie, set of thermal underware and reindeer fur lined leather gloves.

PART THREE: yet another stroll in Hyde park

So being the last day of my course and having crammed in a bit extra on tuesday, we were able to finish at about 2:30. I could have gone straight home for a nap but decided to take another trip to hyde park and get some good photos during the day. it's such a lovely place. we've been there a couple of times without having a chance to get good daytime photos.
Click for map

so here is a collection of photos that I took today from the south east end of the serpentine:

looking south east from serpentine road right on the corner of the lake:

from the sluce gate at the very end of the lake, looking towards exhibition road bridge

went walked about a hundred meters north allong the paths you can see there:

from behind the sluce gate:

In some of the photos I tried to capture the sun glinting off the tops of the trees, but it just didn't turn out. and yes I know in some of them the ground looks all muddy and gross, that's because it is (it rained earlier in the day). but the place is so majestic with the sun going down and the crisp air and the nice breeze. I like watching the people go past, the families, the old couples out for a stroll...

anyway, due to the fact this was about 3:30 on a wednesday afternoon, there was no line at the german sausage or dutch pancake places so I took advantage of it and had a mid afternoon snack. also bought some cool german marshmallows and rumballs:

in hindsight I should have taken a photo of the guy selling the reindeer skins... they were amazing.

so my conclusion after 5 days of winter is: When you come over, if you want to see london changing from just a cool, large city with lots of stuff to do into a place of magic, stay at least for the first part of winter :-D

Winter Wonderland

2007-12-01T19:34:00.000Z

Just before we start, if anyone would like any of the photos in any of the posts at a higher, better quality resolution, just send us an e-mail saying which one you'd like and we'd be more than happy to send it to you. The lower quality ones posted here aren't very good for printing out.

Now we continue with our regularly scheduled program.

For those of you in Queensland who haven't lived elsewhere very much, Queensland does not have winter. Queensland has a mild autumn compared to London. Yes, I know, I can hear you saying that London only has a mild autumn compared to the north pole, but we're Brisbanites and that gives us the right to complain about the cold :-)

Nevertheless, "Cold" is not the only thing that happens in winter. Today, being the first day of it, all the Wintery/Christmasy-type things have started. today we walked allong the high street of Balham and found rows apon rows of christmas trees (real living ones) lined up with their branches tied up with string! Christmas lights are draped arround every street lamp. Christmas decorations are in the shops everywhere and everyone is rugged up like eskimos, just like you see in the movies. We're of course are also rugged up just as warmly, but we're still cold when we go out for long periods.... perhaps we're assuming no one else is cold but they really are, perhaps it's just that we're australians and by nature are cold-intollerant.

So today we got up at 10:00, went to the shops and bought some wrapping paper, came home and wrapped frantically in order to get to the post office by 1:00pm. I'm happy to say, although we didn't get a chance to write on any cards, your presents are on their way :-) hopefully they'll arrive on time.

As Debbie said in the last post, we had intended to go to Kew palace today, but when we went to the website to look up directions, it said that it was closed until next march. so instead we went to Hyde Park.

Every year, Hyde park sets up a fair ground which they call the "Winter Wonderland" it's got an outdoor ice skating rink, christmasy craft and food stalls, merry-go-rounds, ferris wheels and other cool stuff. so we decided to go. it's funny, because after midday, you start subconciously counting the hours of daylight left. when we left home to go to hyde park at 1:30, we had 3hrs of "sunshine" (if you can call clouds "sunshine") left in the day :-) We're not complaining of course though, as winter approaches we're loving London more and more :-D

First things first: We needed coffee!! this is Debbie all rugged up in the coffee line.

while drinking the coffee, we got to watch people on the outdoor ice rink:

After wandering around for a bit, we came across a stall that was giving out free "Pimms Winter" Pimms is a very popular gin-based drink that you mix in with things like lemonade. the Pimms Winter that we had a sample of was served mixed in with hot apple juice. it was absolutely perfect for a winters afternoon. I don't think either of us have had a warm fruity drink before - it just doesn't make all that much sense in Australia, but here, it's so nice!

Debbie and Pimms Winter:

public service announcement from debbie: "I'm not pregnant in this photo, I've just got a few things in my pockets that make me look fat."

Next we went to all the little Christmasy huts selling bits and pieces. there was one that had Baubles made out of glass to hang up on Christmas trees, another that had deer skin rugs (these were amazing - their fur is so thick!), one sold wooden carved ornaments, another lollies and ginger bread treats, another had an assortment of hats.... where I bought my first proper hat ever (apart from the acubra I got when I was little):

It's a nice vinyl one (I'm too cheap for a proper leather one at the moment)

In the middle of the semi-circle of huts were three food huts. one with dutch waffles and pancakes, one with German sausages and the other serving German BBQ rissoles and mulled wine. we passed them by because the line up was like this:

however, we later decided that we were hungry enough and waited in line for probably 15 minutes. it was worth it for a yummy red German sausage hot dog each ( no photos for this because we ate them too fast) :-D however, we did take a photo of the ferris wheel while we were lining up:

With our stomachs filled and our bodies warmed, we thought we'd take a ride on the ferris wheel:

it took only about 10 mins lining up, but unfortunately during that time the sun set. no photos from the wheel then due to the light, but the cityscape was beautiful. We could see big ben and the London eye and lots of other churches and pretty lights in the city.

This is what the wheel looked like when we got off a few minutes later. this is only about 4:30 in the afternoon:

Of course, a whole 30 minutes or so of waiting in line and then on the ferris wheel and then wandering about the fair grounds made us want something warm to drink ;-) so we found another cafe. Debbie bought a tea and I bought a mulled wine. Mulled wine is red wine with spices in it that's served hot. just like the Pimms, it was perfect for a cold evening in London. it's fruity and tangy and although it seems a bit strong flavoured to start with (not alchohol flavour but fruit and spice flavour) , it's certainly very yummy. the closest thing I've tasted to it is port, but that doesn't really compare. even Debbie liked it very much, and she doesn't normally go for wine at all.

Me with my mulled wine cup:

We went up to the serpentine lake and the temperature dropped significantly. it was very uncomfortable, I don't know what it is that makes near the water particularly cold, but dispite the beautiful view of the lights on the water, we got out of there fast, so fast we forgot to take a photo :-(

anyway, for the rest of our evening, we just wandered about the place taking in the sites, snapping pictures and generally enjoying each others company... walking in the Winter Wonderland!

here are the other photos we took.

a Haunted Mansion ride for the kids:

a iced up tube slide:

a cool slipery slide tower:

merry-go-round:

ice rink at night:

bungee jumpy ball-type-thing. the "bungee dome"

Debbie outside a chrismasy hut:

more stalls:

and a mugshot of us together.

brrrrrr... we're getting out of here!!!!

XOXOXOXOXOXO
(debbie made me put those in :-) )

Kensington Palace

2007-11-24T19:29:00.000Z

Today we went to Kensington Palace

We were given an audio guide and listened to some historical narration as we walked into each room. We absolutely loved the Palace. The high ceilings were beautifully painted. There were very large tapestries on the walls and we even got to walk on the original black marble staircase!

Here's a little bit of trivia for you about Kensington Palace. In 1689, Nottingham House was purchased by William III and his wife Mary II after being invited to leave Holland to rule Britain. Renaming it to Kensington Palace, it was an ideal home, situated west of Hyde Park. The Palace was enlarged and the Orangery was added in 1704 during the reign of Queen Anne. Kensington still continues to be a residence for members of the royal family. As we know, Princess Diana and Princess Margaret have resided there.

Unfortunately we didn't see any of the royal family, but we did have a wonderful afternoon tea of a very yummy lentil soup, Victorian Sponge Cake and Belgium Chocolate Cake. Yes, you are probably thinking "Why did they order Lentil soup?". Well, we hadn't eaten lunch and they were only serving afternoon tea. We didn't feel like cucumber and cream cheese finger sandwiches as we had waited for about 10mins in the freezing cold to get into the Orangery, so the soup was a very attractive alternative.

Those scones were the size of your palm.....enormous!

At the gift shop, we bought a book called 'Royal Palaces', a Kensington Palace postcard, an envelope sealer 'H' stamp with wax and Andrew Christmas present which is a King Richard the Lion heart Chess Set!!!! but don't worry, he won't get it until Christmas.

We didn't walk around the gardens as much as we would have liked too because time got away and it turned dark at 16:30 and it was freezing cold!!!

not sure why Andrew is hugging the tree??? maybe to keep himself warm??????

So that's it for this week.......next week we plan to go the Kew Palace!!!

Stay tuned :)

London Dungeon

2007-11-21T17:00:00.000Z

So we went to the London Dungeon on the weekend.

so yeah, I was hoping for a historical tour of the history of prisons and all things not quite so nice about London's past. turns out it's closer to a house of horrors tour at the ekka, y'know the ones that cease to be scary when you turn about 10 years old..... it could have been really good, but it was just a little bit underwhelming on the amount of historical information you were given by the "tour guides" compared with the yeoman warders at the tower of London. possibly the coolest bit was the worlds largest mirror maze modeled off the crypts of all hallows church in the city "THE LABYRINTH OF TERROR!" wailed the theatrical "keeper of the crypt" as he pointed the way in. it was fairly cool, but it was as the guy behind me kept saying.... "the LABYRINTH OF PLASTIC......" it would be fun to do that again and try to find the way out myself, but debbie was grabbing my arm and following the crowd... it ended up that nearly the entire tour group ended up going in a circle following eachother... "we're going in circles, I think we should go that way" I said... "nooo, let's just follow these people" said debbie.... thankfully we were all saved by the next tour guide who led us all out the correct way.

also that day, we went to try to do a bit of Christmas shopping. they've started turning on all the christmas lights and putting up decorations etc. it's really great. because sun sets at about 4:30ish and it gets really dark at about 5, it's hard to not walk arround the city at "nighttime".

it's really very lovely, we havn't taken that many photos of the lights because we don't think they'll turn out very well. most of them are hanging over the middle of streets and you can't take a shot of them without them looking just like dots in the sky.

anyway - enough for now.

I have a favor to ask: could everyone who reads this, who has debbie's e-mail address, e-mail her and say "write on the blog!!!" perhaps that will spur her into action :-D

Friends from Oz and the Tower of London

2007-11-09T22:57:00.000Z

Hi everyone!

So two weekends ago our good friends Dan and Aimee came over and stayed with us for 4 nights. they had just come from spending 2 weeks in paris on a training course for Dan's work. it was so wonderful to see them - absolutely amazing. on the saturday afternoon we went and walked arround the city a bit and took them to a belgium resturant (the one with the mussels). Dan's put some photos up on his facebook profile if you're interested.

trafalga square:(all the folowing photos are courtesy of Dan)

We tried a new beer "Kwak" it tasted alright, but came in very cool glasses:

Sunday we went to the tower of London. (more on that later)

on Monday night we came home and found that Dan and Aimee, after being here for less than 3 days had seen the queen and prince charles and the king of saudi arabia:
Queen and king

prince charles

how awesome is that!!! so of course we were very jealous :-D

Here's us on their second last day at a pub just near our place:

so anyway - we of course have quite a few photos of the tower of london. we thought we'd be different and make a video of them with cool music and transitions and stuff.... We were going to make a story up with the photos with an evil king and queen and a peasant uprising but we couldn't agree on the story and there was a bit of an issue with plot-creep so we scrapped the story and just added cool music :-D

one photo of Debbie in the ancient throne room didn't turn out as I expected. I said to debbie "try to look Regal" but it just turned out horribly. anyway, we made it turn pretty colors to try to brighten it up a bit :-P
the photo of the raven is also courtesy of Dan.

it was a very cold, windy and rainy day so some of the photos also have water on the lens unfortunatly. the whole day was great fun dispite the weather. I'd like to go back sometime because we didn't even get to see the whole thing!

anyway, here's the video (it's 10 meg so you may want to hit pause and wait for it to fully download so you can view it smoothly) you can also hit the full screen button which is the button on the bottom right of the video section:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_lfdMZWDcI

London Loves

2007-11-04T17:58:00.000Z

So here it is: We've each chosen 5 loves and 5 hates about London and the UK. We've tried to keep them specific to "The best things about London and the UK" as opposed to generic "the best things about being away from home" type things, if you understand me...

sorry no photos this time - we're working on a multimedia slideshow thing of our adventures in the tower of london and I'm working on a "cityscape project" with lots of artsy shots from arround the place :D

so: Andrew's Best things about London/UK

1. It's London...
Since childhood, I've learned about this city and this country. I've played monopoly and dreamed about owning a hotel in mayfair. I've sung "London bridge is falling down", I've learned about the knights and the crusades. I've learned about the spanish amarda, the black plague and the battle of britain. it all happened here. Balham High street, (a 100 meter walk from my house and a street that I walk allong every day to go to work) was originally a roman road. there's a street in the city called "london wall" it's called that because a good portion of the original Roman legion-built city wall is still standing there from nearly 2000 years ago. a lot of the inner city suburbs are named after the gates built in the walls (Aldersgate moorgate, bishopsgate) there is just so much history here. famous land marks, famous people....

This is where big ben is, this is where the prime meridian of the world is, this is where guy fawkes tried to blow up parliment house, this is where Oliver Twist said "Please, Sir, I want some more". This was the capital city of the world back when they used to say "the sun never sets on the british empire"
this is the largest city in the european union, it's so big that it has FIVE international airports. approximately one in every 880 people in the world live here (one in every 471 if you include the metropolitan area.)

I honestly feel a bit honoured to be here and slightly intimidated by it.

2.The Location
I always considered myself fairly international event-savy when I was in Australia. I would always read international news and would be able to small talk about the political situation in the EU or the US. Now that I'm in London, it's very apparent that I had no idea.

France, spain and germany are just over there --->
the USA and canada are just over the other way <--- Israel, the middle east and the persian gulf are just a bit further past france. We ARE in the EU. We're right in the middle of it all. it's no longer international news... it's local. as intimidating as that may be, it's also good :-) france is just over there ---> meaning that we can just pop over to paris when we feel like it and have the money.

the Location is definately very cool :-)

3. The range of stuff to buy.
because the population is so large and we're right in the middle of europe, there is so much variety. Niche brands that in australia sell via intermediaries can have their own physical store. yes! there's an oakley store! rather than just browsing online and dreaming, I can go in and touch all the products! there are so many stores that sell different products it's hard do discribe. you ask a local "where do I go to buy nice jewelry" and they'll say "chancery lane or sloan square" there's whole streets with nothing but certain types of stores!

4.The Diversity of the people
ok - please accept my apologies for any non-politically correctness in this part.

in Australia, there is hardly any black people, hardly any indians and far more asian. in London, there are people from every country. African, polish, Indian, asian, and lots from europe. oh, there's some english here also, I think....

It's just amazing living in a massive stiring pot of cultural diversity (and occasionally tension).

5. Warm clothes
I've always liked the idea of overcoats and gloves and hats. now I can wear these things without feeling pretentious :-D it's really great.

Hates:
Since arriving in London, I've found myself increasingly annoyed by oblivious, slow-walking people everywhere and people who chew gum with their mouth open... they seem to be everywhere. however, I can't put this down as part of my pet hates section beecause I've concluded that their seemingly increased number is only due to the fact that the city is many times larger than Brisbane, and therefore it's more likely that one will bump into an oblivious slow walking person or be forced to see someone chew gum with their mouth open. if I had more time on my hands I may conduct a study to identify the ratios of normal people to those that chew gum with their mouths open in various capital cities of the world, but for now I'll just have to deal with it and accept that there will always be people that chew gum with their mouths open, wherever you go....

1. English keyboards
This is my number one pet hate. Because I'm a computer programmer, my keyboard is a large part of my day. the faster I can type, the more time I have for thinking about solving problems etc. Now, I know that the standard QUERTY keyboard it not necessarily the most efficient in terms of where you place your fingers (look up info on the Dvorak keyboard one day) but the keyboard used in australia (actually the "US keyboard" that I'm used to, still seems efficient in terms of the extra keys. we don't necessarily have to streach all that far for the shift keys etc, and the keys that we don't use all that often are placed well out of the way of the main letters.

The english keyboard however...... it's like, either no one was really thinking when they designed it, or it was designed by an American out of spite.... they must have thought... "ooo, here's some extra keys that they won't need very often, let's move the really important ones just out of reach and place the stupid ones no one ever needs in their place.

observe:

Now, those with a key eye will notice the following things about the UK keyboard:

The left shift key has been reduced to half the size and the backspace key has been put in the half that used to be there. previously I'd be pressing shift on the part closest to my hand. now I actually have to lift my hand off the home row and move my entire hand about a centimeter to the left every time I hit the shift key. try it... try typing while only hitting the far left hand side of the left shift key.... how if you multiply that distance by the number of capital letters per day, then my left hand is moving additional METERS! not only is my left hand moving more, but my typing is slower because of the required moment and my typing is riddled with backslashes whenever I miss the key....

now the same goes for what they've done with the enter key..... the squished it over to the right and put the hash key right where I'm used to hitting enter.... so my right hand also has to leave the home row at the end of each line of code I write.... further, my typeing is riddled with hash symbals as well as backslashes. what idiot thought that people use the back slash and the pound symbal more often than the shift and enter keys!!???

Another thing you'll notice is the At symbal is where the double quote used to be. although this isn't as annoying as the other two issues, I still use the double quotes FAR more often than I do the at symbal.... so they've moved yet another useful key further away for no reason...... Typing is no longer a no-brain excersise. I have to force myself to remember to move my hands further away to reach the most basic of keys... it's ineficient and annoying.

2. "Coffee"

very few places make it a consistant way, sometimes it's too cold, sometimes it's too hot and tastes burnt, sometimes they put a straw in it..... the only place that makes really good coffee is run by Australians.

3. "Rain"
It never really rains properly here. it sprinkles lightly, it sprinkles heavily, but it never rains like it does in Australia. . it's like the sky constantly has a cold and is sniffling annoyingly.... it's like the sky goes to sneeze, and then holds it in, spluttering rudely. You want to hand it a tissue and tell it to blow it's nose. sometimes I feel like yelling "JUST RAIN PROPERLY AND GET IT OVER WITH SO WE CAN GET ON WITH OUR LIVES!!"

I've always liked a good rain storm in the summer. I smile and look out the windows, listening to the raindrops hitting the roof, watching the water flow down the gutters, knowing that the grass will be green the next day and everything will smell clean and fresh.

but London is just grey, miserable and wet.....

4. Lack of bins.

The city councils in London don't seem to believe in rubbish bins. it's possible to walk kilometers without seeing a single rubbish bin. There's the occasional one here and there. it contributes to a dirty city, there's chewing gum on the ground all over the place. there are no rubbish bins in train stations whatsoever. I'm told that this, in particular is because of potential terrorist attacks.... they're afraid that people will put a bomb in a rubbish bin and that it may go off at a train station....

If I was a terrorist, I'd be putting the bombs on the trains themselves, at peak hour. Now, it just so happens, that dispite the lack of bins on the stations, most southern line trains that I've traveled to work on have bins underneath the seats........ it's idiocy I tell you!

5. confused walking people

In the tube stations, there are signs on the escalators telling people to "please stand on the right". everyone does, and people who are in a hurry walk up the left of the stairs. This, combined with everyone driving on the left of the road means that most people are confused when it comes to passing people on the footpath. should they obey the normal traffic rules or tube station ettiquite? basically it means that every person you go to pass is confused which way they should go. it means chaos when the streets are packed with people shopping. why doesn't everyone just walk on the left?

Debbie's Top 5 Loves about London

1. Other countries are so close. It's just a hop, skip and a jump. Although we haven't travelled yet outside London, let alone the UK, the option is there. If you feel like eating some french croissonts, then it's only 2 hours to Paris!

2. There is so much to do and see in London! That's why we haven't got to travel outside the UK yet. Down every little street, tucked away are some beautiful and quirky shops, coffee shops and buskers. You can listen to thrilling opera or be swept away by violins, violas and cellos playing clasical music. There are also lots of events like arts, crafts and lots of markets scattered around the city. The city has a real buzz!!!

3. The cultural diversity. You can be walking down the street and listen to conversations of people speaking in French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Greek and many African languages as well the accents of the Scots, Welsh and Irish. You can learn so much about other cultures just be looking and talking to the many other nationalities here.

4. Seeing so many supercars. Yes, I'm sure you're surprised about this one but after being converted to loving Top Gear which is Andrew's favourite show, I have learnt a little bit about supercars and love seeing them zoom past. I would love to race Andrew in a Lamborgini.......

5. The tube being so hot and stuffy.........Why you ask is this a love of mine..........Well it really helps to thaw out your frozen face after it freezing on your way to the tube.

6. I know it's a Top 5, but I have to add this one in too, esspecially for all the girls! You can wear a knee high boots, coat, scarf, beanie/hat and gloves and not look like a fahion try hard. It's not only fashionable to wear all of these items, but it's essential to survive in London! It's only just gone Autumn, the leaves are falling and I have just rushed out to buy a coat as last week my hands actually hurt walking to the tube.

Debbie's Top 5 Hates in London

1. Being squashed and pushed and shoved on the tube. Especially when there has been a delay and the trains are not coming every 2 mins, but coming every 4-5mins. You may think this wouldn't make much of a difference but believe me it does. The trains need to come every 2 mins otherwise people start to panic and it's every person for themselves. You feel like a sardine being pushed from behind and even when you think there is no more room onto the train, you're wrong because the person behind you desperately wants to get on so they force you on in an attempt of also getting on. Then when you are finally on, you don't need to hold onto a bar because you are so tighly jammed packed that you're totally supported by other people's heads, backs and bottoms! Then when the train stopps at the stations, you literally have to squeeze through or push people with your handbag to let you through off the train.

2. Going shopping down Oxford street takes a lot of patience because as the population of London is so big, people not only NOT move out of the way, but they also come from all 4 directions. You end up zig zagging around to find you haven't moved very far from where you started. Ok Ok, a slight exaggeration but you actually get further if you walk slowly.

3. Not having a car and having to go to the supermarket everday because you can only carry a small amount of items without yours hands falling off. You have to ask yourself, "Do I really need to buy a bottle of milk, shampoo, laundry powder and toilet paper today. Nah.....we can do without the toilet paper!"

4. Not being able to eat outside without getting smoke in your face. I had forgotten what is used to be like in Australia when people could smoke outside cafes. London should definitely introduce the no smoking near eating places rule. I realise that would affect about 70% of the population but at least Andrew and I would be happy!!

5. Not being able to understand people on the phone at work because of their accents. One guy I had to pass him over to the other receptionist because I couldn't make out one word that he was saying. After the call was over, I found out that he was Polish, but he was speaking English?????

So there it is......my love and hates about London......but I do have to mention that my real biggest hate is that you guys are not here with us. And my biggest love is when Andrew does the housework!!!!!! Just kidding, Andrew is my biggest love full stop!

English Media

2007-10-19T22:57:00.000+01:00

So I just thought I'd write a quick post.

The media is a bit different over here - there's the equivalent local rags like the brisbane news except the city is about 4 times as big as brisbane so there's 4 times as many people standing on the street shoving newspapers into your face on the way to work......

anyway - thought I'd share this horrifying tidbit:

"They taste rather nice, a bit like rabbit" it says........
is there no compassion!!!!!

anyway, on a lighter note, it's still weird hearing english accents on the TV during ads. these are two which seem to be showing often now days.... perhaps they explain why these Londoners eat squirrel....:

"Angry Whopper" - Burger king commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYtzsmiv85s

"The Cadbury Gorrilla" - Cadbury
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wsGndlpQRs

Anyway - just had to post this...... more comming this weekend also, as promised

The Secret Weapon of the English

2007-10-16T22:07:00.000+01:00

Hi Everyone,

I must appologise for the last blog post. it was written when I had a cold and was grumpy and tired. I just whipped out something because we hadn't written anything for two weeks. ...and yes, I know, it's been almost two weeks again, but we've been very busy. I hope this one makes up for it. Unfortunately we don't have any photos to show, but I'm sure our literary prowess will more than make up for it.

Things of interest recently:

I've started a new Job. It.... how shall I put it.... it has potential..... at the moment I'm going batty reading documentation. my first task is also to document a system that's been in place for 6 months. now for you non-computer programmers out there, this is our pet peeve. to be hired as a programmer and then told to document existing systems is like hiring a gardener to wash your windows. sure, they can do it but it's certainly not what they like doing or where their primary skill lies. I was hired because of my ability to solve problems and design solutions, not for my ability to write about how everything works.... anyway, I'm bearing with it for a while because there's a definate light at the end of the tunnel. I'm assured that within two weeks I'll be up to my neck in problems to solve and solutions to design and develop. :D I've already been scheduled in for two training courses which will be extremely valuable for my career.

[warning - slightly technical section ahead, feel free to skip ahead if for you, database theory induces narcolepsy]

When I first got to London, a lot of the Jobs that appeared in my search results required experience with data warehouses and or ETL tools. a lot of these jobs were also paying very lucrative salaries.

Up until now, I have had no hands on experience with data warehouses. although I'm aware of the theory and the concepts involved in building them, I can't really put "experienced in data warehouse applications" on my CV.

Also up until now I have had no experience with ETL (Extract/Transform/Load) tools as such. now, without getting sidetracked too much, I find this really annoying. all these tools essentially do is provide a graphical interface that enables a database developer to create regularly scheduled events that extract data from a source (a database or file) , mash it about and spit it out into another destination database or file. This is basically the core of what I've been doing for the last however many years except I've been coding it all by hand, and yet they require experience with the tools. this is similar to advertising a job for someone to drive an automatic car and refusing to hire someone who's only ever driven a manual.

now I guess I'm slightly exaggerating a bit, the ETL tools, when used properly, do save time and require less technical skill to use, thus directing the brain power to developing a good design, rather than spending it all on cutting code. anyway, I'm rambling....

The two main reasons that I took my current job are these: 1. they were willing to hire me even without data warehouse or ETL tool experience. and 2. they are giving me formal training in two ETL tools and use about 3 different data warehouses.

[End technical section]

We've bought a 3-seater futon! this means we actually can sit and watch TV without squishing eachother! I have unofficially dubbed the room that it's in "Futopia" but debbie hasn't yet warmed to the idea.

Saturday we went out to the Covent garden markets and had lunch at a very nice french resturant on the second floor above the markets. It was a really great view.

On the sunday we slept in and eventually got out of the house a bit before midday. we tried out a resturant that we hadn't been to before near Bond street. I had my first taste of the Secret Weapon of the British: Hot English Mustard.

... so I ordered a steak and chips. when the waitress came out she asked if I'd like some mustard or some sauce on my steak. having only tasted american, french and grainy mustards, I said "ooo, mustard would be nice, thank you". and out comes this benign looking yellow stuff in a small white bowl. I layered it on.... I like mustard.....

So... it's..... different...... it's not like intense pepermint, pepermint clears the nose..... it's not like chillies - they make your nose run and burn your throat... it's not like wasabi.... that makes your eyes water and causes you gasp for air..... it's like.... imagine the brain freeze that you get when you gulp ice.... now imagine that it's chilli flavoured wasabi ice with an intense nose-clearing pepermint topping that whacks your funny bone for good measure, and you'll get an idea of what it was like.... I'm certain that it's somehow derived from surplus WWII chemical weapons.

It could be that bad, or perhaps I just put too much on.... but it hurt my brain and literally made my eyes water....

anyway - so I thought I'd sample some different beer to usual to wash it down. I've been hesitant to try different beers as they usually have weird european names and I don't really know if I'll like them. I thought I'd branch out this time, and so I tried half a pint of Hoegaarden (german I assume). It may have been that the mustard had destroyed the flavor-recognising centre of my brain, but it tasted like rotting fruit. I only drank it when the mustard-induced burning sensation in my head became too much.

Anyway so in-between mouthfulls of pain and the occasional bit of compost liquid, Debbie and I remanissed over the past few months and started compiling a list of Loves and hates about London/UK.

but this post is getting long, Debbie hasn't decided on her top 10 yet, it's getting late in the evening and I have to go to work tomorrow.

so I'll leave it there and we'll get back to you this weekend with some more :D

Love you all!

Just a quick post

2007-10-08T12:48:00.000+01:00

I'm not really feeling laconic at the moment - I've had a cold for the past 5 days or so and am a bit tired so here's the latest happenings in note form:

Debbie's really really really enjoying her new job. this will be her second week.
I have a job now and start on wednesday. It's a bit less money than I was hoping for, but they are offering some great training and it will be a good experience to work there. it's a permanent job.
Last weekend Debbie and I went to the Tate modern - it was very cool. some of the items sat squarely in the fuzzy grey area between what could be called art and what monkeys flinging paint at a wall could produce, but everyone else was staring at it in a deep and meaningful way and we didn't want to rock the boat so we did the same.

Random stuff:

here's some britishisms and their associated Australian terms for you that we've been compiling in order to aide our friends comming over next year:

English / Australian
-----------------------------
Estate Car | Station Wagon
Duvet | Doona
Bankers Draft | Bank Cheque
Hiya | Hello, how are you
Coffee | Semi-hot Swill
Latte | Scalding hot Swill

here are some random photos taken on the day we went to the tate modern. we couldn't take photos inside the building unfortunatly.

the last one is me attempting and failing to look like a business man...... 2 months of not being employed is taking its toll :-(

a section for rev heads:
-----------------------
one thing about London that I have noticed is the abundance of supercars. I think the basic idea is that if you have to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and drive arround the silly narrow streets, you may as well drive one of the most expensive cars in the world and at least make people impressed when you run over them.

in Brisbane I used to actually turn my head every time there a high end porsche (not the boxters...) drove past, but doing that in London would increase my chiropractic bill tenfold. also in brisbane, it would be very rare to see a lambo, ferrari or lotus let alone any of the more rare european supercars, but here it's common place to see all three on any given day in the city. I'm gradually ticking off my wish list for really rare car spotting :D

cars spotted so far:
Ferrari Enzo: 1
Lamborghini Mercielago: 5+ (including roaster versions)
Lamborghini Gallardo: a dime a dozen
Aston Marton V8 Vantage: 3+
Aston Marton DB9: a dime a dozen
Pagani Zonda: 1 (wooo - it's better in real life than it is in photos)
Lotus Exige: 2+
Porsche Carrera GT: 1 (very cool - fastest porsche)
Audi R8: 1

Remaining on yet-to-see wish list:
Bugatti Veyron
Koenigsegg CCX

anyway - last night I watched Top gear for the first time on TV. the new 07/08 series is here! yay! :D

ok - enough for now :D

Day Out

2007-09-21T21:17:00.000+01:00

Parking n. : leisurely strolling through trees, over hills, seeing wildlife, enjoying nature!

Today Andrew and I went parking at Green Park and St James Park. We hadn't been to these parks before and were pleasantly surprised by the views and the squirrels (sorry for the excessive amount of photos of the squirrels but I just think they are the cutest thing, other than Andrew!)

We thought you could follow our journey on the map. We started at Green Park, then walked past Buckingham Palace through to St James Park. We then crossed the road and went and saw the horses dudes (just near 10 Downing Street) and then finishing in Trafalga Square at a little cafe with a latte, hot chocolate and some time to do some more artsy photographs.

So here's the map:
So since we've been having problems with embeding the slideshows in the actual blog - click below to see all the shots:

CLICK HERE

(addition by Andrew here:)
just for interest's sake, I took 5 photographs of the plaque at Trafalga square and mashed them together. if you're interested, click here for the whole thing but you may have to download it to your computer or adjust your internet explorer/firefox settings to actually read the words.

Financial Risk Management

2007-09-19T17:33:00.000+01:00

Introducing.............. Financial Risk Management. www.frmhedge.com. They are a great company! Why, you ask. Well because they are employing me!!!!!!

Yes I have a permanent job, starting on 1st October. I am an 'Associate' which means a receptionist in one of their 2 posh offices just off the Strand and overlooking the Thames. They seem really friendly and professional and are offering me some delightful benefits including health and dental insurance, life assurance, discounted gym membership and they even have bonuses :) My hours are 8:30am to 6:00pm and they are about 20mins from my house, straight on the Northern Line, close to Charing Cross station.

I really have to praise God as he has opened up this door and has given me exactly what i wanted. I even get a 1 1/2 weeks holiday before starting there as I have finished temping for Marks Sattin as of now. Also a big thank you to everyone who has been praying and supporting us. Could you still continue to pray for Andrew to get a job.

I have been fairly stressed, but coping (and now celebrating) as I had been unsuccessful for 2 jobs (after having lengthy interviews). Waiting to hear back from the agencies really tugs at your emotions and is mentally draining.

Andrew and I have really have had to rely on God for wisdom, security and love since coming to London, and trusting in him completely that he will take care of us, no matter what. This has definitely been a positive thing for our relationships with God and we have grown so much. God is showing us what it really means to depend on him and live for him. We see his blessing and care everyday as everything has fallen into place, at the exact time that we've needed it.

So tonight we are having roast lamb with roast vegetables and brooklyn pudding to celebrate my new role!!!

.......that reminds me, I better go put the roast in now........ We have become better cooks since coming to London. Andrew makes French toast, red wine beef stew and wonton noodle soup. And did you know that you can make meringue with just a whisk and no beaters (and of course the egg whites)? Well I did. My wrist is sore but this brooklyn pudding will be worth it :) mmmm......mmmmm.......I've even learned to make Eggs Benedict with home made hollandaise sauce since coming here!!!

xoxoxoxxo Debbie

Gigantic Gherkin and Glorious Greenwich

2007-09-15T22:03:00.000+01:00

So I succumbed to the peer pressure and signed up for facebook. for those of you who don't know, facebook is a social networking site similar to myspace, except more professional looking. anyway, I found that my good friend Ed is living in London with his wife. this was about a week and a bit ago and since then we've had a couple of dinners together, played about 5hrs of network computer games together and generally had a ball catching up. Last Tuesday, to celebrate a new contract that he got after nearly 2 months of unemployment we went out to dinner with his sister in law and two of his previous work's colleagues:

So we all got together again this weekend and went first to the Gherkin in the city and then to Greenwich. A lot of famous buildings in the city and around London were having an open day (happens a couple of times a year) so we planned to see the Gherkin, but when we got there we found out that we had to buy tickets online and that they were all sold out anyway. so we consoled ourselves by having coffee and taking artsy photographs of the building.

Afterwards we took the DLR to Greenwich and went to the markets there and then to the observatory. Very cool really.

Here's an slide show of the Gherkin shots and also the photos that we took of the city and around the observatory. All these photos are high quality so you can click on the box below and it will take you to the photo so you can download it and print it out if you want to :-). as with the previous ones, click play to start it and you can pause and move back and forth between the photos at your leisure.

View Album

Get your own

if all you see above is some white space - we've been having some problems getting the slideshow to display so click here and it should take you to the website where you can view the slideshow.

Also today, while we were walking from the Gherkin to the tube station, literally hundreds of Harley Davidson's drove past with a police escort. in the middle of the formation was a hearse. it was a funeral procession for a Hells Angels bikie gang member who was murdered on the M25 a few weeks ago. it was quite an amazing thing (and noisy). the line was hundreds of meters long and 2-3 bikes wide. the police cordoned off side streets as they went past. We've never seen anything like it before.

Ed has also introduced us to a very nice Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. the dumplings they hand make are absolutely delicious. we've been there twice now. Ed has also taught us how to make fish ball/dumpling/wonton noodle soup. it's very easy really. we're even going to try making our own dumplings!

Last night we also went to see a stand up comedy routine with Ed and his sister in law (his wife Di is in Australia for a friend's wedding). It was Debbie and my first stand up comedy club that we'd ever been to. it was pretty funny, but also very rude at certain points so we actually left at the halfway point. Ed said that it definitely wasn't the best he'd been to. We were all kind of apprehensive that, being Australian, we'd be picked on, but it was ok; there was a bunch of Americans in the first row ;-) it was funny, he asked everyone where they came from and people generally said "Australia", "Scotland" etc. but the Americans said "Florida" or "California" rather than their country, assuming that everyone knows that those places are in the USA. it's funny..... guess you had to be there..... many "americans think they own the world" jokes followed.

also that night we went to an ice cream place that specialised in making deserts out of ice cream that looked like main courses. we unfortunately didn't have our camera with us at the time, but basically we ordered a spaghetti bolognaise made out of ice cream! yum yum!

Good Chiropractors in London have been found!!!!

2007-09-15T08:39:00.000+01:00

This is a special message for all the wonderful patients and friends of Becker Chiropractic. I have found 2 fantastic Chiropractors in London (just incase you were intending to come over and visit me) but of course they are not as lovely as Stefan, but they do do a great job of adjusting spines, and that's the main thing!

The Chiropractors are Alan Jordan and Roger Hollis. They are at the Broadgate Spine Center, on London Wall, London.

I have been to both and currently see Alan as he starts earlier in the morning so I can whip in for my adjustments before I start work at 8:30am. Yes I know what you're all thinking. How could I possibly get up that early since I started at 10am back at Stefan's. Well I am and be prepared for another shock..........I am working until 6-:30pm, 5 days a week!!!!

Anyway, now that you've recovered, I am keeping up regular adjustments (fortnightly at the moment Stefan) because I practice what I preach, and to let you know they charge 45 pounds.

I am loving London and the sun hasn't stopped shining since we've arrived! So far so good. Yes Melanie, the tube is very stuffy and squashy so I have learnt to be pushy to be able to get on the tube. I have been temping for 7 weeks now at a recruitment agency and on this coming monday I should know if i have been offered a permanent receptionist/secretary role at 2 investment companies.

So please write a comment and if you're travelling to London, stop in and say hi to me as I do miss seeing you all. I hope you all are happy and healthy.