Obiter dictum

Moved to Wordpress

2007-05-18T07:26:00.000+01:00

Well it seems like I've moved to Wordpress. This is another blog hosting group quite similar to Blogger. I actually made a new blog there quite a while ago, and have been cross posting. But now I think I just like it better. The reasons for this are mostly that Wordpress has nicer templates and you can more easily make static pages to expand the blog to a bit more of a full site.

Blogger actually added a bunch of new features just as I was going to make the change permanent some time ago, but the extra features, though nice, were not quite enough to make me change my mind. Also, even though Wordpress doesn't allow scripting whereas blogger does I still like wordpress. The overall feature set of the two services are actually quite competitive, but I think Wordpress is edging out in front. Also, the wordpress.com domain I think looks a little bit more professional and less geeky than the blogspot.com one.

Anyway, my new blog address and RSS feed are as follows:

http://damienbyrne.wordpress.com -

Pleasant wanderings

2007-04-20T14:05:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was a nice day. Since it was pay day, a glorious day when you're on a lower income, we went into town and bought a fresh juice from Boost Juice (we're VIP members) then we went to an appointment for Annmarie and then off to Glenelg. Glenelg is a nice beach spot in Adelaide that I think I've mentioned before.

We then went and had lunch at my Mum's house. I made some home made a couple of pizzas using pre-made organic dough from a company called Riviera which we bought from a local supermarket. I must humbly say that the pizzas were rather fantastic, especially now that we've learned that ideally the dough should be left to rise before use, something they should probably put on the label (and which hopefully they haven't and I just didn't notice it, which would make this statement rather embarrassing for me).

We had a nice lunch out under mum's back pergola and chatted about her upcoming trip to Paris and Parisian markets. She has bought a rather good book on it called Paris in a Basket. This lists by arrondissement many of the better street and covered markets both food and flea. We had a look through it and found the markets we had visited while we were there.

After lunch we went for a walk down to the beach and on the way we stopped at our favourite organic shop in Adelaide, The Organik Store on Broadway. The people there are always really nice and friendly and they have good range of organic products. A lot of it is imported so it can be a bit pricy, but the products they stock are very good so usually if we can afford it, it's worth it. We picked up some of the essentials we had run out of and continued down the beach and back to Glenelg.

At Glenelg we stopped off at a cafe (Cibo of course, where else would one go) and had a coffee while the sun set over Mosley Square. You can see a photo of it over on the right. The photo is from the Cibo tables looking back over the square back towards the beach. Very nice day. Now back to study...

Start of the holidays

2007-04-13T19:25:00.000+01:00

Well it's the end of the week and the start of school holidays for the kids. I on the other hand, although technically in the middle of my mid semester break, am still in the midst of reading and writing. Also I am currently looking for some kind of part time work so I'm going to be rather busy.

The Monday after Easter (commonly known as Easter Monday) was quite a bit of fun. Annmarie's brother Mark and his family came up to our place. They were up in Adelaide from Mt Gambier for the Easter weekend and had spent Sunday with other relatives. They were all down here for the day and made quite a bit of noise and motion. We all had chocolate and other food, there was a small 'jam' session with some guitars and everyone generally had a very nice time.

The rest of the week we have been fairly inactive. Trying to get some organising and tidying done. On the Wednesday though the cousins turned up again with more noise and activity (though their eldest did try and hide out on our balcony to read in peace). That same day we had another almost visitor to our house.

The people who live in the flats in front of our place both own dog. The ones on the left (facing from our front) have a tiny little yapping dog who would probably be much nicer if it's owner didn't keep yapping at it. The ones on the right have a couple of big dogs. One of them looks a bit like a cross between a Labrador and a Malamute, the other, I don't really know, but something of a similar size. The cross one is quite amusing. It looks quite huge and if angry would probably be quite dangerous. But it's demeanour is quite lovely. It's the kind of dog that gets so excited about being patted that it can't sit down.

Anyway, on the day in question the side fence of these people fell down. Not completely, but enough. It looks like one of the cross beams on the frame of the fence fell down ages ago and someone had put it back together by tying the sheet metal panels together with string. So the string had broken and the dog kept running in and out and round and round. Probably not the safest thing for a large dog, so we chased it back in a few times. The other dog is not quite so friendly, but luckily it seemed on the most part to just prefer sitting put.

The kids quite loved having the dogs run round a bit too, they were very entertained by it all.

Pique-nique de Pâque dans le Parc

2007-04-08T13:57:00.000+01:00

Hello all. We finally have our own Internet connection, so now maybe posting regularly could be a reality. Of course I am very busy with study and my "crazy projects" so I'll just have to see what happens. Unfortunately we only have dial-up, so I now have to come to terms with being back in the slow lane after hitching a high speed ride with my brother for several months while we were staying at my Mum's house. Thanks for that by the way mon frère.

We've settled into the new house nicely in the main. The wiring is a bit dodgy and the light bulbs seem to blow far too often and the plumbing has needed a bit of a look at as well as a couple of other little things. But other than these small issues, it is quite a nice house a good price. Two bedroom and two story, although I think I have already mentioned that. Nice small back yard with some big trees and some big trees out the front too.

Over the summer, which hasn't been too hot, though the temperature did bump up a wee bit, the house has stayed very cool indeed. This is in part because of the house being made from proper solid brick instead of the paper thin varieties of plaster board and thin brick veneers that most houses these days seem to be made from. So the house has retained a cool, fresher air than one of those houses. It's quite a relief when one gets back in from a warm day to meet that natural coolness. We'll have to see if the house keeps warm in the winter though, that can sometimes be a problem with these houses where they feel like an ice box in winter and need constant heating.

I've especially been enjoying having an upstairs mini-balcony just off the main bedroom. We have developed a tendency to sleep with the main door open and the screen door locked. It's quite nice to fall asleep hearing the wind in the branches, very relaxing. Some might say Zen.

Anyway, I might just pop up a few details of what's been going on recently. The most obvious for today is of course Easter (la Fête de Pâque) and we actually went out and spent it with other human beings. French human beings.

The French Benevolent Association of SA held a pique-nique at Hazelwood Park, a lovely park over in the east of Adelaide. This was of course full of francophonic type people as well as francophilic type people. As much as I would love to count myself in the former group, we all mostly fit into the latter. Despite this, the pique-nique was very enjoyable. We got there with our rather French assortment of goodies (well I thought so anyway) consisting of crusty bread, a brie from Normandy called St Siméon (seems to be somewhat similar to a coulommier, but that may not be quite right), some salad and some muffins and stuff. My Mum had come with Joseph and my foster sister Erin, and Annmarie's Mum and Brother Justin had come along as well. We all tried to keep with the French and Easter themes.

The day was very nice, warm and bright so everyone had a good time. There was an Easter egg hunt pour les enfants, Willow and Gabriel enjoyed that very much. We enjoyed being amongst the French speakers but were a bit shy about trying to speak to too many people earlier in the day. Some of the members of the Association came around and chatted-in English-but we mostly kept to ourselves unfortunately.

Later when we had all eaten and packed up our stuff, we played some football (European, not Aussie) and then we started thinking of heading off. Willow had wanted to get some phone numbers of some of the French children and I went along to hold the pen and tell her our number so she could write it. After she had swapped numbers with one of the other families, I dove in and started a chat in French.

Considering my skill level and volume of real experience, I think it went quite well. I went through the basics of introduction and greeting. Was introduced to another, described my Family and my current state of French studies and how much Annmarie had studied. I even added that that we had stayed in Paris for a couple of months last year. This was my only downfall in maintaining the conversation.

I just completely misheard, "Est-ce que vous l'aimez?" after saying we had stayed in Paris. This translates into "Did you like it?". Seeing that I was trying to decipher it, she rephrased to "Est-ce que vous amiez Paris?" or something like that, referring to Paris directly, but I was already lost. She put it in English and the penny dropped and I had one of those moments of "Oh! l'aimez!" and then we continued in French again.

Overall I was quite pleased with my efforts, I was even complemented on my French-and quite forgot to reply with my trained light-hearted rejoinder to downplay the compliment, apparently very common in France. I went through all the basics that we have covered in my Uni course and then added some more. Describing other people, describing the past and other places. It was quite exciting to converse in another language. I could feel my brain rebelling against the fluency concept though and desperately wanting to slow down and translate. Having a person there waiting for an answer does help to spur on the brain though.

So, the rest of today has been eating Easter chocolate (Lindt and Haighs mostly, we do like nice chocolate) and generally getting ready for tomorrow when Annmarie's brother is turning up with his four kids, so there will be much activity then.

As said before, I am looking to keep this blog up-to-date™ from now on.

Cheers.

A slight delay

2007-03-13T18:43:00.000Z

Well, today was fun. Sorta. We were all ready to move into the new house. We had packed up our stuff (clothes, kitchen-ware, food - the stuff that was out and being used during our temporary stay), 0rganised some the boxes of stored effects ready to be moved, reserved a rental trailer (a pretty huge one at that) and generally got ready to go. I went down to the real estate agent's office to settle our deposits and collect the keys.

Just before getting there I called Annmarie to let her know that I was just about there when I was informed that there was a problem and we wouldn't be able to move in for another three weeks. Luckily Annmarie had been able to cancel the trailer without any problems and she was on her way into town. We went to see the Agent and he told us that although the property had been advertised with a set move in date, the tenants actually had a lease till the end of October. It seems they had elected to move out sooner, but something must have gone wrong with their plans and they couldn't get out earlier. So we agreed to push back our acquisition till the 31st.

It's quite annoying as we spent some time getting stuff ready and the preparation was quite an interruption to my studies, but I imagine that if I were in their position I would appreciate being given the extra time to find somewhere to go myself. At least we know we have this place when it does come available and we don't have to worry about the looking any more. We just have to put the boxes back away for a while.

Not gone yet.

2007-02-22T07:03:00.001Z

Well, it's been months since I last wrote to my blog and much has happened. I'm just getting ready for a new academic year so not much time to post up everything that has been happening. If anyone does still read this blog, we are planning to get dialup again soon so we can have some small level of connection to the world, then I promise I'll start posting again.

Final destination for now.

2006-10-08T11:33:00.000+01:00

Well, after too long a search (almost 5-months), we have found somewhere to rent. This has been a rather difficult thing to find as we are a low income family since I am now a full-time student, but we have found a two bedroom flat in roughly the area we were hoping for. It's very close to the city so we can easily walk there and back, there are an abundance of shops and restaurants around and we are in walking distance of the Adelaide Alliance Française and the Glenelg tram. Glenelg is a rather nice beach spot that we like and my Mum lives very near by to the Glenelg stop. The Glenelg tram route also runs very regularly compared to bus services so it's actually quite handy. Another handy part of being near the city is that my University is located in the city also, so I'll be able to walk to and from Uni very easily. Overall it seems to be an ideal spot. The place is quite nice too. It's a cosy two floor, two bedroom town house in a group of five. It has it's own small yard (both front and back) and it's reasonably modern.

It'll be good getting back to living in a permanent housing arrangement. We've spent a bit too long living in cramped quarters. The Paris flats were are very small and since getting back and staying with my Mum and brother we are all squashed in too much. So having our own space will be good and I'm sure Mum will appreciate getting her house back.

I'd like to add more on about what's going on, but as Annmarie has just pointed out, I need to get on to my studies as I have assignments that need to be completed very soon.

Ooops, better post again - part 2.

2006-10-02T11:38:00.000+01:00

Right. Still haven't gotten back to regular posting. Bad blogger and all that. Still studying and as I started my semester a couple of weeks late—plus having some reading heavy subjects, such as Law and Database Systems—means I've been playing catch up all semester. Added to the fact that we are still trying to find somewhere to rent has meant not much time for some things.

Anyway, more posting and catch up soon, I promise. Unless I get to exam time, in which case there may be a longer pause.

Ooops, better post again.

2006-09-22T16:39:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been months since I've posted anything onto my blog. Very bad form on my part, soon to be rectified. Alot has happened in the past several months, not least a return from Paris to Adelaide. I've also returned to full time study and renamed my blog. Anyway, I'll get back to regular posting and such soon and also get started with filling in the blanks and tell the missing tales from the European adventure.

Cheers, talk to you soon!

A Monday morning

2006-06-05T11:02:00.000+01:00

Well it's Monday morning and I'm back in the internet cafe and doing the job application dance. Still not much in the way of positive responses yet though. I've sent off my application for the antiquities transportation job with a better than usual cover letter so hopefully that should perk up some interest.

The weekend was quite pleasant. On the Saturday we took a train off the Versailles. We got off to a bit of a late start, but the trip out is not that long, about 40 minutes or so on the RER C line. Our biggest problem was getting tickets.

My credit card has not seemed to work once on the automatic machines that let you buy the more expensive tickets and I never seem to have enough change on me to get carnets of tickets or pricier ones. Once I did actually find a machine that took notes, though Annmarie noticed it and I almost missed it. It was one of those amusing situations which went something like this:

Me: "Hmm, my credit card never works in these things and I don't have enough change."
Annmarie: "Why don't you just use notes?"
Me: "These things don't take notes ... hang on ... Oh! I see."

So we needed to go find a ticket counter to get tickets. We found one that was closed checked the machines and went and found another one, that closed for lunch the moment we got there. There was a lady there that informed us that there was another counter upstairs. We had come from upstairs and so it seemed she was telling us to back. We did but they were still closed.

After about ten more minutes of walking around we found our way to yet another desk, that was in the metro section rather than the RER and was up then downstairs. Still, we got the tickets and onto the train and were on our way.

The town is absolutely lovely. Despite being a very popular tourist destination, they all seemed to stay up at the chateau so the town itself was fairly devoid of them. The full tour of the chateau would take up most of the day anyway so I guess there wouldn't be much time for town walking as well.

We took the opposite view and did town walking and collected some supplies for a picnic. Just the basics, traditional baguette, cheese and raspberries to accompany the salad we had brought with us. Unfortunately I didn't find any small bottles of wine to bring along, mais, c'est la vie. We made our way into the outer gardens of the chateau (the free parts) and had our picnic surrounded by other French families doing the same. The bread and cheese was just marvelous.

After eating we wandered into the actual gardens of the chateau. We saw the basin of Neptune and the grille du dragon (gate of the dragons). We then wandered further into the grounds towards the displays of fountains where there was supposed to be a concert of some sort. Both fortunately and unfortunately, it was just coming onto five o'clock at that point. Fortunate as we discovered that at around five access to the gardens became free and unfortunate as the concert finished at five.

The grounds were spectacular and we only saw a very small part of them. We stopped off for a coffee at one of the cafes in the gardens, then headed back to the train station. Overall a rather relaxing day.

The Sunday was a late start with nothing much to do in the morning. After lunch we took another RER train, the A line this time, off to a place called Chatou. It's a spot about 30 minutes west of Paris and is just a quite little suburb that used to be a town. There are some lovely French maisons there and in particular a Steiner school that Annmarie wanted to see. We again took some salad with us and bought baguettes to make a picnic lunch by the river. No cheese or wine this time though, but still it was nice. Less impressive than Versailles, but very relaxing all the same.

Thank God it's Friday

2006-06-02T21:20:00.000+01:00

Well, normally one would say such things after a long hard week of work. For me it's been a mix of job seeking and sight seeing so that is probably not quite appropriate. The last couple of days have been mostly job seeking.

The bakery job sounds very interesting. It's really more of a café kind of kitchen than a real bakery. It sounds like it would get me lots of experience for running a real kitchen of my own, but unfortunately the pay is just too low. So I may have to pass on it.

I have uncovered another interesting job possibility though. It is an administrative position for a company that transports and delivers antiques and art works for collectors. They seem to offer a full service for art and antiquities collectors. They will do custom packaging and organise delivery world wide and will even arrange hotels and limousines for deluxe shopping trips for collectors. Working with them could be really interesting as I have quite a hobby interest in antiques.

Apart from that, we went to see the Musée de l'Orangerie and saw Monet's wonderful paintings, Les Nymphéas which I believe the Musée was originally set up to house. These are truly amazing paintings and worth the cost to go in to see. The rest of the collection is not as impressive, though the Renoirs are very good. Orsay had better paintings, but was much more crowded.

Anyway, this is just a quick check in while checking email. Tomorrow we are going to try and get to Versailles and wander around the gardens as the weather will be nice, I think.

Solemn post

2006-05-31T12:50:00.000+01:00

The last couple of days were not so interesting except for a trip to le cimetiere du pere lachaise. For anyone who doesn't know it, this is supposed to be one of the most famous cemeteries in the world. It has a strange collection of residents, including people like George Haussmann (the architect that designed much of the beautiful buildings and boulevards of Paris, transforming it from a mediaeval maze into the grand city it is now), Camille Pissarro (the impressionist painter whose work we saw in the Musee d'Orsay), Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. Oscar Wilde's grave was bizarre, it was covered in lipstick kisses.

Unfortunately they closed the cemetery to visitors just after we arrived so we only really saw Oscar Wilde and some war memorials. We also managed to walk right past Edith Piaf, oh well. The whole cemetery was stunning though. Many of the family memorials (or sepultures) were just incredible, some almost like little chapels.

We went off the day before and found a Carrefour that was over the motorway from us. This is supposed to be the ASDA or Tesco of France. They have some "hypermarchés" around that are bigger than the regular "supermarchés" you usually find. This one was just a supermarché. It was not bad, especially for us non-super kinda shoppers. We bought a few things including another kids book (this one was a kids picture book that teaches English names for common items) and a copy of the first Harry Potter in French. The copy of Harry Potter is kinda for the kids, but I though that it would also be useful for me to get a book that I knew the story and was written for a young audience. Could be good practice.

Apart from that, we've been mostly just doing our regular daily activities. So that's home schooling for Annmarie and the kids and job seeking for me. I've got a couple of interesting possibilities at the moment.

One is in a tourist shop that is also a bureau de change. Doing bureau de change could be interesting for a while. The other is an English bakery and lunch time restaurant that does weekend brunches. They are looking for an assistant chef to help with the lunches and help make up the menus. Would be challenging to be sure, but could be interesting.

Annmarie has been musing over starting a natural/raw food kinda restaurant somewhere for a while now, so the bakery job could be an opportunity to get some commercial experience. I also have mused on getting a career in finance so the other job could be interesting too. Maybe not...

Anyway, gotta get on, make calls and get things moving.

Après Fête de Mères

2006-05-29T12:33:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was kinda nice. It was Mother's Day here in France (Fête de Mères) and Annmarie slept in till midday. I tried to go out with the kids to do some shopping, but what I thought was a street food market was just a street trash and treasure kinda market. I called my Mum and our friend Luiza called us.

We headed out eventually and walked down to the Bastille. There was another market there, with much nicer stalls that the one down near us. We milled around there for a while, then headed off to our primary destination: gelatti!

We had seen a gelatti shop a few days before. It made up cones of gelatti in the shape of flowers, I believe I have mentioned it before. Annmarie wanted to go out and get one of these for Mother's Day and I felt I shouldn't argue. The gelatti was really nice.

Then we wandered back home and got some groceries en route. Just now, I'm going to go get a falafel for lunch and then call Annmarie to see what she is up to.

Quick post

2006-05-26T20:37:00.000+01:00

Hello all. Just a quick post from an internet cafe late at night to let you know we are still here. I'm doing some job seeking stuff and it's late, so I won't say much here. We've had an interesting couple of days. Last night we went to the Musee d'Orsay, finaly, and saw the exhibition, though it was far too crowded to really appreciate it.

Today we had a picnic at a giant science park. That was quite fun though the weather could have been better. I'll post up a better description soon. Cheers.

More of the weekend and not much else

2006-05-24T11:16:00.000+01:00

Well I will now get on to the rest of the weekend, unfortunatelyI don't have any pictures to post up, so that will have to wait for later. Some of them are really quite good. I keep thinking that I need to post up pictures from other parts of our trip as a lot of them are really worth seeing.

Alors, the Sunday was really quite interesting. We had decided (encore) to try and go to the Musee d'Orsay, which will be our outing this afternoon hopefully. We also were réessayer (trying again) to find falafel, having failed to find some on the Saturday night at our local middle eastern type kabbab shops.

Now falafel is interesting as I didn't actually know it's real origin. In Adelaide, practially every Lebanise takeout that makes yiros, also makes falafel. I always assumed that falafel was either of middle eastern or arabic origin. Maybe Turkish or whatever. I have now discovered that it originated in Syria.

I don't really know the various affinities within the middle east and arab regions so I don't know how it propogated around, but I would have assumed that Turkish people may have been in to it. Not the Turkish people who live round us at the moment it seems. Looking in one of the Paris guide books in the apparment we rented, I found a reference to a falafel house that Bob Marley apparantly claimed was the best in Paris, which is probably pretty high aclaim on the international falafel eating scene. It was called L'As du Falafel and was down in Marias in the 4th arrondisment. That was near Place de Bastile.

So we decided to walk down to Bastile and go have lunch at L'As du Falafel. The walk was as uneventful as a walk through Paris can be. We stopped at a park en route (to make up for not stopping at one the day before) and made our way to Bastile. As we got to close to Bastile we heard a rather loud noise, it sounded like people and horns and drums. It seems we walked right into some kind of street march.

There were tens of thousands at least lining the place and the main roads comming into and out of the place. There were fire breathers and performers and what seemed like at least 10 or more bands on the backs of trucks slowly making their way through the city with the crowd marching along side.

We ended up following some kind of mexican/south american/spanish kinda band that were really good. The had a "Stop Bush" sign up on their truck. There seemed to be other activist kinda posters around, so I guess that this was some kind of social awareness march or something. It was a really good atmosphere in the crowd, very social and amiable.

So we followed the crowd up to near where the falafel shop was and then cut off to the side. We found a small museum of the history of Paris which was free, but we didn't go in, we just had a sit down in their courtyard and had a look at the gardens and an Angel statue. We then headed off to the falafel shop.

It was absolutely packed. There were actually three or four of them all next to each other and they all seemed rather good, but we came for this one, so we lined up for the outside takeaway. It was rather well organised. They had a couple of people who took your order in the line. Then you paid that guy and he gave you a ticket for your order so when you got to the counter (which was very noisy) you just gave the guy your ticket and he got you your food.

The falafel was really good. Definately worth tracking down if you are in Paris and you like falafel. We sat down in the street to eat them, since the whole march atmosphere was just so inspiring, kinda like the old fringe in Adelaide. Sitting around, I noticed that there were a lot of Jewish shops and bakeries in the area. I found this interesting at first, but reading the wikipedia reference I now see that falafel is a hugely popular food in Israel, so that now all makes sense.

After finishing, we had given up on going to Orsee, so we just wandered around Marias for a bit. My Mum has suggested that we go see a little church in Marias, but unfortunatelyI didn't remember where that was or even that we were in Marias at the time so we didn't get round to that. There were a lot of nice little shops everywhere and we had fun looking around. We found filled merangs the size of footballs and a shop that sold Italian Gelati and shapped the cones like tulips or roses (not sure which it reminded me more of). Then we made our way back home and, after another quick stop at a playground, got rained on. Grandement.

The rest of the week has been looking for work and doing shopping. I have had my hair cut here (un peu) and there was a good street market out yesterday which dissapeared today. But my time is running out and I'm off to find a fresh copy of FUSAC and the American Church in Paris (which is meant to have a good tableau d'affichage for work and accomodation ads). A bientot tout le monde.

A longer post

2006-05-23T15:05:00.000+01:00

Well, it certainly is easier to type on a familiar keyboard. My last post took an awfully long time to write so I didn't get much time to talk about what had gone on over the weekend.

The move was rather hectic. Basically I managed to not rent a car for the day, meaning we had no transport to move our stuff out of the flat and into the new one. Luckily we managed to find a "man with a van" at short notice. He was a really nice guy from Shrilanka and we had a good chat on the way over. Being short notice, we could only get him at the last minute so there wasn't much time to co-ordinate switching over.

He didn't help with lifting the bags (he had an injury that prevented it, he told me that if we had needed that, he would have brought someone else) so I had to rush up and down the stairs hefting the bags down. This was made especially fun by the fact that there was painting work going on in the stairwell of the apartment, so there was dust and painting equipment everywhere.

Hefting the bags past all this was a rather difficult task. I spent most of it on the verge of plunging down the stairs. The weight of the bags didn't help either. Annmarie and I have both agreed that next time we travel, we really need to lower the amount of stuff we bring with us.

Unfortunately due to the lack of time, after loading up the van and driving over to the new flat there was still quite a bit of stuff still back at the first flat. I knew there was some still there, but I didn't realise quite how much. So the final inspection ran through with no immediate worries (that may appear when I get the final notice from the rental company) but then I, having gone on my own to return the keys, was stuck with rather too much luggage to carry around. I met up with Annmarie and we made our way back to the new flat.

After that, we didn't really have much enegry for doing much else, so we just wandered round looking for dinner, which we eventually had in a Quick burger restaurant. They are a local French company that runs a MacDonalds esque burger chain. Not too bad, better for salads and they have a nice fish burger.

The next day we didn't really feel like doing much at all. We just planned to go out and get some groceries to stock up on for the week. While wandering around we thought we'd hang out in a park for a bit. Unfortunately all the parks had been locked up. We didn't think this was usual Saturday behaviour in Paris so when we spotted a caretaker in one of the parks, I asked why the park was closed. This went kinda along the lines of:

"Pardon monsieur, le parc est ferme?"

"Oui, tout est ferme aujourd'hui."

"Pourquoi monsieur?"

"Parce-que (something something something) trop vent."

... (me thinking) "Ah, vent. D'accord, merci monsieur."

So I got that it was too windy. Didn't understand most of the rest of that sentence, but the end bit was enough. So we had the picnic lunch we had bought on a bench just outside a park and then wandered round a bit more till we found a little supermarche.

The Sunday was rather interesting too, but I'll write about that later, and post pictures. I've been writing more job application emails at the moment, and I'm a bit out of time. I also have a hair cut appointment to get to. Tomorrow we are hoping to get to the Musee d'Orsay to see an exhibition of Cezanne and Pissarro. I've messed up a couple of our attempts (including today) so we have to make an extra effort tomorrow as the exhibition ends this week.

Still here and still ticking

2006-05-21T20:57:00.000+01:00

Well everyone, we have successfully completed the move to our new flat. The place is quite nice actually, smaller than the previous place technically, but much better laid out so it actually feels roomier. We have a phone, but no internet, so I am posting from a late night internet cafe. I'll have to see if I can get something organised tomorrow for that.

I'm running out of time here, so I'll just make it a quick post. The French keyboard is making typing slower so I'll just finish off for now. A bientôt.

Moving again

2006-05-18T21:43:00.000+01:00

For the second time in two months we are moving again. This time to something a bit less nice but a bit cheaper. Still very expensive as this is temporary accommodation in Paris but cheaper than where we are now. This will be the second month in Paris and if things don't work out we will more than likely move back to Australia. However we are still confident that something will work out. I have two good options at the moment, both being telephone type positions. One is for a start up company as a business to business salesman (not too sure about that one) and the other is a telephone interviewer for a survey and research company. I actually quite like the idea of the second one, so I really hope that I hear back favourably from them.

One big problem of the new flat though is that at the moment, it looks like the place doesn't have a phone. Not having internet access is fine, I was mostly expecting that when we first came. The fact that this place had ADSL thrown in was a nice surprise. However, without a phone, we can't get any kind of dialup internet and nor can we keep in contact with people by phone except by mobiles, which internationally is very expensive.

I've been told that the landlord may be able to get a phone put on for us for the month, so we'll see how that works out, otherwise the agent says we may be able to change to somewhere else. This flat isn't in an ideal place entirely, it's out in the 20th arrondesment, quite out the way. However it is right next to a park, which is useful, and is of course right on a metro line, as everywhere in Paris is. I'd rather not have to move again, but we need to be out of here tomorrow so we'll see how things go.

A localised Blog

2006-05-17T11:02:00.000+01:00

As noted in this comment, my blog is now appearing with a French interface. So all the dates and other navigation texts are in a French format. I had noticed this myself but wasn't sure if it was just for me since I was connecting from France or if it was changed for everyone. I thought it might be because I changed my location in my profile to France. So Bec's comment has confirmed that, vraiment, il a changé pour tout le monde.

Something to fill the gap a bit...

2006-05-15T20:16:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm not in the mood to write a whole history of our trip up here just now, but I thought that I might pop up a few pictures that I have snapped while here. I haven't really posted many pictures of Glasgow, but there seems to be something prompting me to do it here. What is it? Je ne sais pas!

The first image over on the right is of l'arc de triomphe with a rather patriotic French flag draped down the middle. This was quite an impressive sight and was up for the celebration of the fall of Germany and the end of WWII in Europe on the 8th of May.

This next one on the left is another monument adorned with flags pour le 8 Mai. This one is a gold statue of Jeanne d'Arc. As everyone should know who that is I won't go into an explanation. The statues and the buildings in general are quite fabulous. It is one of those places that you can just wander about having a couple of coffees and just appreciate the city.

The last picture I'll put up for now is the one at the bottom right. This is of a building that I didn't know much about before arriving in Paris. It's le Petit Palais. This is a beautiful old building that has been recently restored or cleaned or something and is just (re)opening as a museum. It really is a tremendously impressive frontage. Seeing things like this has really struck home the difference between seeing pictures of some things and seeing them for real. The size and grandeur of this building is rather lost when viewed as a photo. Even if you blew the picture up, it would just not be the same.

Anyway, it's getting late and I have other things to do on the web, like look for work and flats, so I'll leave it there and get back to it later. A bientôt tout le monde!

Something weird happened

2006-05-15T20:13:00.000+01:00

Well something weird has happened on my blog. I had a bunch of posts about being in London and making the move to Paris, but they seem to have disappeared. I'm not too happy about it, but I can't do anything about it just now.

I'll try and run a catch up bunch of posts soon, but at the moment, Annmarie and I are looking for our next place to live. Hopefully it will not present too much of a problem. I'll try and catch up my posting then.

The journey south : Part I

2006-04-13T23:37:00.000+01:00

Well we're off. We have left Glasgow on another bold venture, this time targeted at the pays du dieu. Right now I am sitting by the window of our travelodge room typing this post out into OpenOffice since the only Internet connection is wireless and I haven't got a wireless adapter on this laptop.

Speaking of which, the first thing that I seem to be missing is my old work laptop. It was an IBM thinkpad, and it had wireless networking, it ran games not too badly and it had one of those trackpoint pointing devices. For those that don't know, this is an IBM device (don't know if they designed it, but they seem to be the only company that sell them) that has a dot in the middle of the keyboard, sometimes called a nipple) that allows you to move the mouse pointer around by leaning the pointer in the direction you want it to go.

At first I found it rather irritating, but I've gotten rather used to it and now think that I prefer it over a touchpad. You can just glide around the screen no matter what resolution you have without stopping and starting again because you ran out of touchpad. I also found it was ideal for gaming, particularly FPS.

But enough of that, onto the trip I hear you all cry. Well, getting out of the flat in the morning was fine, last minute cleaning and all. Then there was the first realisation of just how much baggage we had with us. Really, it is/was not much more that when we left Australia in the first place, but I'm not in as good shape as then and the weight seemed insurmountable.

Getting down the stairs was one thing, getting to the train station was another. We hefted the bags all the way down to Argyle Street and the effort was enormous, not a good sign for the trip overall. Once there, I left Annmarie sitting with the kids and the bags and ran down to the real estate office to drop off our keys. On getting back, we quickly debated how long it would take to get to the station and decided that both of us would get taxis separately and meet at the station, a scenario that would repeat itself later.

Once at Glasgow Central, we got a luggage trolley and headed in to find our train. We met Rosy, one of Annmarie's friends from Willow's school, near the platform. She had come to see us off. Funny that the person seeing us off out of Glasgow is an Aussie from Queensland. With her watching the bags we made our way up to the front of the train and stored our larger suitcases, then headed back to Rosy (who was giving the kids rides on the luggage trolley) to get the rest of the stuff onboard. Unfortunately my cousin Caroline couldn't make it to see us off as well, which is a shame.

With the rest of our stuff stored, we got into our seats for a not exactly uneventful train ride, but I'll put that into a continuation later. Right now I gotta get to sleep so we can get to my brother Paul's flat tomorrow. Gnite!

Very late night; very early morning

2006-04-13T00:16:00.000+01:00

It's very late and I am up putting the finishing touches on our packing for the train. It's been a lot of hard work getting ready and now we are as ready as ever for leaving. It will be sad to see Glasgow go, but a new adventure is opening up for us. Next time I post, I should be in London, or at least on the way.

Early morning packing

2006-04-11T06:30:00.000+01:00

It's 6:30 am and I'm just setting off to Tesco to buy some fruit for breakfast. Our big fridge has been turned off and dried out for storage so we don't have much room for anything in the small fridge in the flat.

Our stuff in mostly packed up and ready to be collected by a removal company called Crown Relocations, who are part of a larger logistics company, I think. They seemed to be the cheapest and the most professional, as they use their larger logistics framework to keep the costs down. And they can deliver worldwide, so Peter, if you read this and I forget to mention them, give them a look if you do move to the states.

Well it's now 6:40, so I'd better get going. We're having an early breakfast because the moving people could be coming early this morning and we have to finish sealing some boxes and a couple of other little packing things.

Almost ready to go

2006-04-10T01:46:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been a busy last few days. We have organised and confirmed accommodation, and have just about confirmed the movers, just have to get some contracts signed and back to them. We now have train tickets and accommodation to get us right through to Paris with hopefully no real problems and then there for a month. Now I just need to get a solid permanent job and then permanent accommodation.

Most of our stuff is now packed in boxes and ready for pickup on Tuesday. We've cleared out the kitchen so it's now just the stuff in the furnished flat left, but that will do till we go. It looks like I might not go into work tomorrow, but I will be in on Tuesday and Wednesday to run through things with the new guy who is replacing me. This is interesting, because the new guy is only just putting in his notice at his current work and so will not be joining Integria for a month. In the mean time I have indicated that I am available to do some project work from France if it is needed and I am given enough notice, so I might just get some extra work from them to keep us going.

Anyway, it's getting late and I should be off to bed. G'nite all.

Preparing to move again

2006-04-05T12:49:00.000+01:00

Right, so slightly sooner than usual. Not quite a month this time.

Lot's has been happening in the last month, but the important blog worthy event is that we have made a snap decision to move to France and try our luck there. Yes, you heard right, we are making another move. So far we have no work and have not quite confirmed accommodation for the first month there, but it looks like we may have found it. The current front contender is a little cramped, but we are used to that. It's right in the city, quite close to l'arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysées. Should be nice.

We are currently in the throes of packing, planning and arranging the move. It's all rather half planned as usual, so there may be lots of news to write up soon. We are also at the other side of having arranged to meet up with lots of people before we leave, always a rather complicated timing dance. We have caught up with quite a few people including my cousin Derek. I'll be hopefully meeting up with some more relatives on the weekend up at Saltcoats.

Stansted Airport

2006-03-16T11:31:00.000Z

Here begins the first of what I hope to be many short posts, the kind of posts I probably should be making most of the time.

As much as I like coming to Stanstead, I've been here a half dozen or more times in the last couple of years on business trips, I must say that there is not a whole lot of things to really do here. I've quite explored the shops around and there is only so much interest one can generate for looking at servicing trucks whizzing round the tarmac. This is especially true when one get's to the airport at 1 pm for a 9:15pm flight.

A roughly eight hour wait for a flight is really at the limit of most people's endurance, and although I would consider myself an enduring person, this seemed too long for me. This was mostly due to the fact that I have been running a training course in High Wycombe for the last couple of days and really didn't get much sleep at the local travel lodge so I was rather worn out to start with.

So I did what any sane person would do in such a situation. I checked my luggage into the luggage minding service and jumped on the express to London. Planning on heading back to the Airport at around six, this gave me about three to four hours to amble about in the grand old city. As such, that is roughly what I did, amble about.

I took the tube off to Covent Gardens, made my way across to Tottenham Court Road and on to Lester Square. I even saw what appeared to be some kind of film opening night being set up (for either Basic Instinct 2, or something else...). At around this point it was getting on to close to five and the idea of fighting through the London rush hour crept into my mind and it dawned on me that scooting off to the airport before that might be a good idea. So I strolled over to Picadilly Circus, up Regent Street (where I was acosted by an Amnesty International guy, hello whoever you were, keep up the good work) and onto Oxford Circus and onto the tube. From there it was James Street Station and I got the Stansted Express just after five.

This still got me to Stansted quite early for my flight, especially as I had already printed out my boarding pass (a new Easy Jet procedure) so I didn't need to queue for that. So I've been sitting for quite a while, having a couple of drinks and trying to pass the time before my flight. Anyway, it will be boarding soon, so I might just leave it there. Till next time.

Après Noël

2006-01-30T10:59:00.000Z

Bonjour tout le monde.

I've been back on my feet for some time as my recovery from my debilitating nasal disorder was reletively swift. I must say that the nasal douching was very useful for speeding it up, but enough about that. Unfortuneately, just as I got better, Annmarie got an ear infection. So she got worse as I got better, and I took over most housely duties. Then with work getting rather busy as we delivered a report, I haven't had time to write about either Christmas or other events since. I'll write a catch up soon as we have some rather interesting news, for anyone that is still reading this blog.

Douche done

2006-01-03T22:48:00.000Z

So it is now two nasal douches and an episode of Firefly later. I must say that I do feel much better now that it's done. Wasn't the most elegant or pleasant procedure I've ever done, but much less uncomfortable than I was expecting. I'm still not perfect but I feel that tomorrow I may be doing much better. However, now my mucus tastes like salt, kinda like I've been swiming down at the beach.

Desperate measures

2006-01-03T19:46:00.000Z

Well, my cold (and possible sinusitis) has been getting gradually better. Unfortunately it's been getting better in that way that shows you just how bad it really had gotten by the fact that you feel so much better, but then you realise that you've still got so far to go to being normal.

As such I am now moving into the realm of advanced techniques in the nasal/sinus/mucus realm. I am preparing to administer a nasal douche to myself. For those who don't know, it's basically pouring lukewarm salty water through the nasal passage (either one nostril to the other or nostril then out the mouth) in order to clean it up. Really helps blast out the mucus I hear.

Anyway if I don't make it through this procedure, Annmarie will provide a post-mortem debriefing of the event.

Wish me luck!

Heading back to healthy

2006-01-03T01:33:00.000Z

Well Christmas is over and the New Year has arrived. I haven't been in a fit state to enjoy the latter however. I've been rather sick as a matter of fact. It's only been a cold as far as I know, not even the flu, no fever or anything like that, but it's been the most viscous cold I've ever had. I'm guessing it's just not like one of those Aussie colds but a real Glasgow cold. It's absolutely floored me for ages, the worst has been for the last three days but it was quite bad for the three days before that. I won't go into the details of how bad it's been, but I'll just say that it's been bad enough that my sinuses have felt like they were on fire. Anyway, I'm starting to recover somewhat and it's ebbing back to just a regular bad cold at the moment. I'm starting to be able to think anyway. It's still keeping me from sleeping a bit, thus the late night post. Anyway, I'm hoping in a couple of days I'll be well enough to get back into the swing of everything, at which point I'll put up a proper account of Christmas.

It's beginning to look a lot like ...

2005-12-23T01:43:00.000Z

I had posted this up on my other blog, but Joe pointed out that nobody may actually read it there, so I've moved it over to here.

Well. It's been ages since I posted to either blog. Joe posted to his blog a couple times since finishing work, but apart from that we've all been rather poor at this. At the moment I am noting that my brother Joe is leaving the UK to return to Australia and my wife's brother and mum have just left Tokyo (after leaving Australia of course) to come up here for Christmas. Kinda weird and symmetrical. They'll even be arriving in Heathrow around the same time.

I'm just sitting here finishing a drink trying to type and listening to Rufus Wainwright's version of Hallelujah (an old Leonard Cohen song) and the Eels' I need some sleep. Over and over and over. Still not the least productive night I've ever spent.

I'm actually feeling kinda sad that Joe is going back to Australia. I'm really gonna miss him, even though he's been in London the whole time and I've been a six hour train ride away north. It's been nice having two of my brothers on the same side of the globe while I've been up here. So it'll be just a little bit less nice without Joe up here. Speaking of Joe by the way, he's applied for a job at Blizzard, and if for some truly bizarre reason someone from Blizzard reads this, you'd be absolutely crazy not to hire him. If I ever get around to applying, you'd be crazy not to hire me either, but that's another story. Anyway, I am feeling a bit of a weird pang at the notion that he's heading back. I think the UK will be quite poorer for not having him here.

Anyway, it's getting late and my glass is empty so I'm off to bed to dream of the white Christmas I'm not going to get this year. Oh well, maybe next one.

Finishing the story after a shamefully long gap

2005-07-26T13:49:00.000+01:00

Well well well. It's been even longer since my last post than probably any time before (and at well over two and a half months, that's probably an understatement). I believe that we last left our story on edge while in Henley on Thames. Much has happened since then, not least returning from Henley, which I should probably finish first before getting into the many other things that have happened since. It also has come to my mind that there have been no other photos of our grand voyage put up, something I should probably also remedy.

Before getting onto the many, many, many things we have done since my last post, I'll finish where I was up to then. The day after my last post, we did indeed drive into Eton and Windsor. Both were, as I recall, quite lovely. Eton was quite lovely and very, err, well, not quite medieval but not really renaissance either. Somewhere between the two, but, as they say, steeped in history.

While in Eton, we visited Eton. That is, of course, the lovely little school they have there. It is quite the ultimate English private boys school (or is that private English boys school). It also is steeped in history and is housed in a really nice set of oldworldly buildings. Plus they seem to have a very good attitude towards the importance of education. Hmm, maybe a possible school for young Gabriel? Perhaps, perhaps.

Moving on from Eton, we visited Windsor, Annmarie and they guys for the second time, and me for the first. As could be expected, there was much activity getting ready for the royal wedding and there were a lot of police around. What we saw was very nice though. Windsor castle was indeed impressive.

While there a street artist was setting up (although in the railway station, so I'm not sure if that really makes her a street artist) and in order to help try to drum up customers offered to draw Willow. Willow of course was very flattered and accepted immediately.

Being so long ago now (I might have to start making notes methinks) I'll run through the rest in summary. We got together with Paul and Joe for dinner, I think on the Saturday night before heading back, and had Japanese take away for dinner, and we also had a nice drive through more of the country side to get up to London, rather than go straight up the motorway. When we drove through the back streets we went through Maidenhead again. When Paul originally told us that he and Chloe where thinking of living there, then we met him there for dinner that night, I really didn't see why you'd want to. We met in the middle of town near the railway station and it really was rather industrial and bleak. But on the second drive through, we came up the river and through and the areas along there were just beautiful.

The rest of the stay was pleasant and calming and we were really quite sorry to go. It was a fantastic stay, and I highly recommend the Milsom hotel, if you stay there, just say Willow recommended it. They might remember. Before we left we bought some chocolates somewhere and dropped them in on the nice ladies who helped us with Gabriel, I think they appreciated it. If your out there somewhere, thanks again.

Living in Henley-on-Thames

2005-04-07T23:31:00.000+01:00

Well, we've been in Henley-on-Thames for a while now and it has been absolutely lovely. So far this is the nicest part of the UK that we've been to. It is the epitome of picturesque. A living postcard. The people so far have been absolutely lovely and friendly (even the unfriendly ones) and the views and sights are gorgeous. Annmarie has been contemplating whether or not it might be feasible to simply live in the hotel. I'm thinking that cost wise it might not be the best of ideas.

The drive down on Sunday was kinda nice in that it would have been my Dad's 70th birthday. As such, since we were starting out the day in Derby we scooted across to a town called Ilkeston, which is where my parents were living when my brother Peter was born (he was delivered in a hospital in Nottingham, thus making him a Pom ;-) and where my Dad worked for a while as a lawyer. When we got to the hotel in Henley, I had a pint of Carlsberg, which I think was one of his favourite beers. I was also driving a Peugeot and he happened to love French cars. All quite appropriate I think.

The business side of the trip has been a mixed success. The training course I've been sent on has was a bit of a miss start and was eventually cut short. The original trainer organised for the course from Paris was sick at the last minute and a replacement was arranged from Bristol. A charming, likeable guy who is one of the main UK solutions developer. We went through the scripting training quite quickly (good thing too, since the first day was started 2 hours late) and there were few real problems during this. The second part of the course was using products that had been updated and as the trainer wasn't really familiar with the updates, they felt it was better to leave that part till later. So the training course finished on Wednesday instead of Friday. Still, this wasn't a huge problem for us as since Thursday would have been a washout work wise with us needing to get back to Glasgow, we decided to take the last two days off and stay in Henley till the end of the week.

Up until now we've been staying in the Milsoms hotel above the Loch Fyne restaurant on the main street, but when the course was interrupted, Lexmark cancelled the remaining couple of nights at the hotel and I hadn't quite talked to them quickly enough to get the room for the remaining nights. Friday and Saturday were fine, but Thursday night was booked solid. So we booked the Friday and Saturday and the receptionist (a really nice Canadian lady) found us a small guest house B&B called Alushta about 3 streets away for the other night. The B&B is also really nice, I definitely recommend it if you need to book into one here. It is run by a very nice Russian lady. We were actually sorry that we had only opted to stay for one night, but unfortunately the Loch Fyne restaurant won out in the end (and the B&B said no takeaway food in the rooms, so that kinda limited us with the kids).

So right now the others are asleep and I'm writing this up quickly. Unfortunately the Milsoms has neither Internet nor a phone in the room (but I was informed that is comming in a short while as so many guest request it) so I haven't had a chance to post any blog posts (or check email, so I'm a bit askew till I get back on-line ;-) . Tomorrow however we will be back in the Milsoms and Annmarie can once more get smoked haddock and poached egg for breakfast (a bonus of staying in a hotel above a seafood restaurant).

While we've been up here (and while I've been sheltering away in Lexmark HQ, studying the arcane secrets of their Document Solutions Server scripting language) Annmarie has been exploring the surrounding county and beyond. She and the guys have been to Windsor (didn't see any royals, but the castle had quite a police presence apparently), had a peek at Eton, and wandered around Henley. They've seen a rowing/boating museum with a Wind in the Willows exhibition. They've also seen ducks and swans and quite a few other things.

After the finish of my day yesterday, we drove up to Maidenhead and had dinner with Paul, who was down there seeing a client (all very hush hush of course, being in the IT security biz and all). It was nice, we found a nice Italian restaurant and had pasta and pizza. We were joined by one of Paul's colleagues, a nice guy called Tim. It was great catching up with Paul.

Since getting off the course I've had a bit of an opportunity to see some of the area too. Actually some of the bits of being down here I've enjoyed the most is the country drives. The smaller roads are really nice and a pleasure to drive through. Not the bigger motorways (they're of course just motorways) but the back roads, the A and B routes. There are some that are tree lined and meander alongside rivers. I get the impression of being in a fancy car ad sometimes and it's really starting to stir the car ownership bug in me. I'm even thinking that a coupé cabriolet hard top convertible would be nice (a Peugeot 307 cc to be precise). I guess I can start that mid-life crisis early.

The drive we had today was really nice. We went up to Oxford and had a walk around. It was quite rainy and a bit cold but it was still a nice day. Usually in Glasgow, the rain will come and go during the day so this happening in Oxford was no great blow to us. However, unlike in Glasgow between the rain was bursts of sunshine instead of just grey skies. Oxford was quite beautiful but didn't stack up quite so well after Henley. Still a nice day was had by all and we even found a lovely French bakery/confectioner called Maison Blanc. All the buildings of the various Universities and Colleges were great too, but we failed to find the old street that my Mum had told us about where all the buildings on it are from the 1800s or something (must ask her what that was again).

Anyway, it is late at night and I need to get to sleep as we are thinking of driving down to Windsor tomorrow (unfortunately they moved the wedding so we won't see it then) and then maybe have a longer peep at Eton.

Made it to Derby, just...

2005-04-03T01:09:00.000+01:00

Well we've made it down on our first leg of the trip to Derby. We've got our little suite in the Stuart Hotel and everyone who isn't an Internet addict is asleep in their beds. The trip down ended up being one of turmoil and tragedy.

Getting down to Peugeot was fine, the car was waiting and ready (a nice 5 door 307 turbo diesel, bright blue, which Willow likes) and there was no issues getting going. I popped up to the library of Alliance Française to return some books and to borrow some more, then it was off back home to pick up the guys. The drive back across the city centre (the bit which would take me about 12 minutes to walk) took about 45 minutes to drive due to road works.

So we headed off quite late, then missed the turnoff to the M74, took a back round about route to get back onto the M74 and instantly hit road works. Once we got onto the smaller roads to Dumfries and Galloway, things got moving a bit better as we switched to a less used road with no works.

Halfway down, Gabriel decides to throw up in the back and we had to stop to clean it up (poor guy). Luckily the farm house that we stopped in front of had two lovely ladies that work as nurses in local nursing homes and they offered to help clean up and let the kids sit for a minute and look at their cats and sheep (I think Gabriel liked the sheep, but Willow preferred the cats). They were absolutely lovely and if we have time on the way back we might try to stop off and give them a present.

So we get to Dumfries very late and give up on going to the Galloway Ice-cream factory and cafe in Gatehouse of Fleet. Annmarie did find some of their ice-cream in the local Tesco so that was something. Now leaving Dumfries at about 4:30 we started the long road to Derby. The Derby trip was largely uneventful but after the late start, far too long, almost got lost around Stoke-on-Trent and ended up getting to the hotel at about 11:30 (meal breaks, toilet breaks and getting lost really add time to trip).

At the very least, I had lots of fun. And really that's the important thing, kinda.

Heading south again

2005-04-02T00:52:00.000+01:00

Well we're off again. I only seem to write up something when we go somewhere. But then again, this is meant to be a travel journal.

It's very late and I'm about to head off to bed because in the morning I'm off to pick up a car from Peugeot, a nice (hopefully diesel) 307. Once acquired, we will be driving down to Henley-on-Thames in England (it's in Oxfordshire, just north of Reading for anyone who knows). We're going a day early, and on the way down we are hoping to stop off in Galloway to get some ice-cream. Then it's a night in Derby before heading off to Henley-on-Thames. The hotel in Henley look very nice, very swish.

I'm actually heading down to do some developer training at the Lexmark offices in Marlow. They are paying for the hotel and the car, which is nice, and Annmarie and the kids thought they'd come along too.

Anyway, it should be a nice time for all of us, and actually I wouldn't mind spending the week strolling round a quiet English town, but someone's gotta work.

On the road again

2005-01-05T23:16:00.000Z

Well I am writing this sitting on a Virgin^® train heading up through Preston (that's right next to Manchester, sort of) and heading for London. We'll have a night in London staying with my brother Joseph (Paul is off to Paris with his girlfriend) then it's off to Heathrow and Annmarie and Gabriel are on a plane to Australia.

Yes that's right, just Annmarie and Gabriel. We've decided that since we are going to stay for a while longer (a couple of years or so) that one of us needs to go back to Oz and sort out a few of the things that we had not really sorted out properly and Annmarie generously volunteered to make the trip (the chance for her to get back to the hot Aussie sun of course had nothing to do with it). In the mean time I'm going to be trying to fit in working and getting Willow off to school etc. And just in case anyone is wondering, yes, we did finally book her some tickets to get back up here so they are booked and paid for.

Annmarie is currently conked out (we were up late last night sorting out some of the details) and the kids are drawing. Just in case anyone reading this, particularly those in Australia, Virgin do run trains and planes and just about any other business you can think of (well not really but it does seem that way sometimes). Oddly enough, the Virgin trains and actually quite a bit nicer than the GNER (the regular British trains) and are clean and seem to be run a bit better.

Unfortunately my train back was cancelled (something about signalling work on the lines) and the weekend is booked out, so I am now trapped in London for the weekend (Paul and Joe will be pleased... I think...). I may look to see if I can get a Ryan Air (i.e. dirt cheap operator) flight back up but will need to see what happens.

And now a trip back in time.

Christmas. Well I can't say that we had quite as eventful a Yule time as Paul and Joe, but we did have a rather enjoyable one. Although we did have snow technically in Glasgow, there was not too much of it on the ground around Merchant City. There was a bit more out in the suburbs and the West End where we had set out to visit my Aunt Janet for lunch.

The actual Christmas thing was a bit of a mix’n’match of good and bad. We had gone down to the Glasgow Cathedral (well the Catholic one anyway, St Andrew's I think) for the early Christmas vigil mass. We got there a bit late and it was absolutely packed. So we decided to see how the rest of the evening went and to maybe come to either the late vigil (11:30) or the next morning.

Since it was a little late, we were all a bit worn out, and well, just because it was Christmas we decided to have dinner out. We went to a nice little Italian café we’ve been to a few times called Vespa. We sat out in the back dining area, which is in a little glasshouse styled room. While waiting for dinner to arrive, it started to sleet.

Now we had been waiting for a while on tender hooks for the possibility of a White Christmas. It was looking quite promising at the time. A few days before it had sleeted when I had left to walk home from my office and it had been really quite something. I understand that for someone who had been through sleet many times before that it would not be all that fun, but for one with little experience of it, it was really quite beautiful. Sleet, by the way, for those who don't already know, is a precipitation one step away from snow. Essentially, with sleet, the temperature has not quite dropped enough to form snow. The flakes that have formed are just a bit too worm to stay formed into ice when they land. Although you get some snow like appearances (especially on grass or bushes and some trees) mostly when the sleet lands on the ground, buildings and people, it turns straight to wet mush. It still looks rather pretty as it is falling but it's not quite so magical as snow when it hits the ground.

So we were in the restaurant and it started to sleet. Since we were the funny foreigners and had not seen sleet before, Annmarie and Willow ran out front to see, to the slightly bemused looks of some of the other diners.

After dinner we went back home and finished wrapping up presents. A bit after eleven we went back out to the Cathedral for the late vigil mass. That proved to be rather interesting. The church was no where near as packed out as the earlier vigil, so we took some seats down the back and gave the kids some pens and paper so they could draw and keep themselves out of trouble. This overall went fine. There was another little girl in the seats behind us, but luckily this didn’t cause any large amount of noise.

Once back at the flat, we did some small present opening and looked out the window trying to decide if it was sleeting, snowing or just raining. A bit late we then got off to bed. Next morning we looked out to see that it had indeed snowed. This snow was not really that much on the full snow scale, but it was indeed actual snow that did cover some ground (mostly grass). So we can now say that we have indeed had a White Christmas. A better White Christmas would be nice, but this was a good start.

Christmas lunch up at Aunt Janet's was very nice and traditional. I must say that my family always had a very traditional UKish kind of Christmas lunch (as many in Australia do, or used to) but now having had a Christmas lunch in a chilly, slightly snow filled day, I can better appreciate the old classics of roasts and puddings. The rest of the afternoon was very nice too. Good conversation, a solid Santa performance by the talented John Murray (snr) finished off with an enigmatic word game apparently invented and overseen by the also talented John Murray (jnr).

Boxing day. Well ... we didn’t really do much on boxing day.

Not quite a month yet

2004-12-10T23:28:00.000Z

Hey, like the title says, it's been not quite a month since the last time I posted. To be fair though, not a whole lot has happened since the last post apart from the simple hustle and bustle of getting on with life and getting ready for Christmas.

We've also been rather sick again the last couple of weeks, and that's always nice. I guess that combining being in a foreign country and a completely different hemisphere, coupled with Willow going to school has introduced our immune systems to a whole new range of nasties.

Speaking of Willow and school, one of the things that has been happening is that Willow has got to go to a couple of birthday parties of her classmates. One was at a home but the other was at the Glasgow Science Centre, which is a rather good venue with educational value galore. Unfortunately it seems that she now thinks that this might be a good place to have her birthday. Not sure that we could afford it but we will just have to see, hopefully she might have forgotten it by then.

The weather in general has been much like a decent Adelaide winter (well decent in my way of thinking) with the temperature tending to sit around the 6ish degree mark. We have had a couple of 0 to -1 days (with icy rain of course) but unfortunately they have been few and far between. Apart from that the weather is Scottish, kinda cold but mostly grey and drizzly. There has not even been that many really rainy days and storms seem to be few and far between (not sure if any days have really qualified as a storm yet). I'm hoping that it will snow this year as they have been predicting it will, that will be nice.

The other thing that has been really nice at the moment is that Glasgow has been hosting a series of European fairs at a spot in the centre of the city called St Enoch's Square (it's right outside a big shopping centre of the same name). The first of that was a continental market, which was mostly populated by French stalls and one solitary German baker. The food there was fantastic. There was cheese, crepes, potatoes provincial, toasted cheesy baguettes, fruits, bakery/patissery, soups, sweets and many other things. I basically could not help popping in to buy lunch or dinner or a snack or anything really. We especially liked getting a nice cup of mulled wine, especially on the colder days. That lasted about a week.

About a week later, the German Christmas Market from Nuremberg (which I have discovered is a sister city of Glasgow) arrived. It has a similar array of foods and other things, and I have been having a hard time staying away to save money. This one will be here more or less until Christmas. And a good thing too.

Anyway, the continental market brings up a subject that many may find rather interesting. Annmarie and I have come to a tentative decision to move to France after having lived here for a while longer. This is part of an extended plan. We are looking to buy a small property here in Scotland to build up some more funds. Also, due to the fact that more than likely I am going to need to work in France, that I am going to need to speak French (oddly enough). There for, I have started to learn French. I have also, of course, now gone French crazy. My current favourite film is Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, and we have it on DVD along with Delicatessen. Tomorrow we are heading up to Alliance Française to see what the course costs are like and to join their library so we can borrow some French books and films. So it looks like Tokyo and Japanese will have to wait for a while.

Anyway, gotta get off to bed so we can head off nice and early (and maybe drop in on the German market on the way out, and maybe back too). I'll of course try to post more often and keep people up to date.

Bonne nuit et à bientôt.

Lantern walks, libraries and school fêtes

2004-11-14T00:42:00.000Z

Well hello finally again. Once more it has been a deplorable length of time since I last updated this blog. Bad blogger, BAD blogger! But this time I actually have a semi decent excuse. I've been rather ill over the last couple of weeks, kinda off and on since Paul and Joe were here. I've also been working the whole time I've been ill since, as a fancy pants consultant I don't get paid if I don't work and the kids kinda seem to enjoy eating and Annmarie has a bit of an aversion to sleeping on the streets. So that's meant that I haven't gotten around to a lot of things, like blogging for instance.

Anyway, since I'm starting to really feel on the up (a good deal to do with finally starting to eat much better again, diets been slipping recently due to the Scottish influence) I thought that I'd blog again.

So the quick post. We've had quite a fun little week. On Thursday, Willows school had a lantern walk night. Some of the older classes made some puppets that were used as a puppet show and then the school went for a walk around the neighbourhood singing lantern songs (I think) which was nice.

Today (Saturday) has been quite fun too. Started off with Willow, Gabriel and I heading off early to local library , which is in the basement of one of the cities central galleries which sits in a public square called Royal Exchange Square and is surrounded by shops and cafés. Unfortuneatly I had seemed to have gotten the opening time wrong and so we turned up an hour early. Since it was freezing cold and nothing else of interest was really happening that we wanted to go to in the city we popped into Costa (a UK café chain) and had hot chocolate, coffee and croissant. Then we poked around the library and gallery for a bit (they have a corner where kids can draw and learn about art) then headed home.

In the afternoon we went up to Willow's school which was having its fête today, which was also nice, if a bit small. Unfortuneately I would have enjoyed it more had I not not gotten much sleep the night before and then followed that up with not eating properly in the morning before going (a coffee and a fragment of croissant doesn't really go that far). But I ate at the fête and felt quite a bit better then.

Willow made a nice bag at one of the workshops and the kids both got their faces painted. Willow was a butterfly, and Gabriel wanted a green horse, but the painter didn't know how to do horses so she did kinda a green puppy. Gabriel never noticed the difference and was quite happy, till Annmarie tried to clean it off the next morning...

After the fête we went to Patisserie Françoise and had cake and coffee again, then back home again. Well I'd better get to bed now as we have to go to two birthday parties tomorrow for kids from Willow's school (which should be, interesting). G'nite.

Later that day

2004-09-11T21:23:00.000+01:00

Well we're back, been back for some time actually. The day was not really what one would call a roaring success, but at the same time it also wasn't a complete wash out (pun intended). As I mentioned at the end of my last post we were heading out to the farmers market in Partick. Well we headed out around 12, we had read that the market was held between 10-3 every second and fourth Saturdays of the month. After wandering around for a bit, getting some lunch, then getting the subway off to Kelvinhall, we arrived at the farmers market at about 10 to 2, plenty of time we thought. Rounding the corner, we look up at the banner sign for the market to read that it's from 10-2. So with 10 minutes to go, we dash up to the market to see that most of the stalls (all the fresh fruit and vegetable ones anyway) were closed up and driving off. Some of them were still open though, we got some fresh strawberries and rasberries (very nice) some hand made chocolates, and I picked up a present for Paul. I won't put up what the present is in case he reads it (don't want to spoil the surprise) but it is tragically apropriate (tragic both for me buying and for him, tee hee).

After wandering around for the brief 10 mintues (we were told that the market used to run till 3, but most people sold out well before that so the closing time was changed, our info came from a book published earlier in the year), we headed up towards the botanic gardens. Along the way, we were looking out for a couple of nice shops that were supposedly in the area along Hyndland Street/Road. One of those, called Delizique is a really nice little deli (and I do mean little). They have a really great range of your typical deli kinda food (cheeses, olives, breads, meats and sausages, and fruits and vegetables) as well as some more unusual like prawns and mussles and other seafood. We kept heading up Hyndland Road till we found one of the outlets of a deli kinda shop we quite like in town called Peckhams. The Peckhams in Hyndland Road is quite a bit smaller than the one we go to in Glassford Street and just basically has the deli counter and but it has fruit and veg. There is another one not too far on Byers Road which is much more like the city one (but not quite as large an alcohol section ;-).

After poking around in these shops for a bit we continued up the road towards the Botanic Gardens. That was about the point in time that the rain suddenly bucketed down. Although quite used to fact that it can rain at any minute in Glasgow (pretty much year round from what we can tell so far) this particular rain shower was quite a bit heavier than most. Being the only one of the group with no real rain protection (I don't even think my jacket was waterproof) I got the most soaked of the group. But we battled the rain running from tree to tree until we got up to the gardens, at which point the rain had died down. We had a wander round the gardens and took some pictures (and one or two in the rain) and then headed up Byers Road (the enterence to the gardens are at the top of Byers Road, for those who don't know it's meant to be one of Glasgows more interesting shopping/entertainment streets of Glasgow, but we don't really think it's much on something like The Parade or Unley Road back in Adelaide, maybe close to Jetty Road. So we walked up Byers Road, looking at some of the shops and came across a French styled bakery called La Patisserie Françoise and had cake and coffee (or hot chocolate). Looking it up just then, I have discovered that they have a shop just round the corner or two from us, I'll definately have to look them up.

Then it was back off home. I also popped up some pictures from the day are here.

Cheers.

Another Saturday morning

2004-09-11T09:43:00.000+01:00

Yes, yes, Saturday morning. The kids and I have been up for a while and Annmarie is trying to have a bit more of a sleep (well as much of a sleep as you can with a couple of kids playing in the lounge). Now that the excitement of Paul and Joe arriving has subsided somewhat (hope you guys are enjoying London) I thought that I'd actually try to write some more updates.

The last real update I put up was about going to the Edinburgh festival and seeing the jazz band there as well as meeting the new class for Willow's kindergarten (or nursery school as they call it here, I think).

The next weekend we went to Edinburgh and met up with one of my cousins, Kate. This begins the second terrible train experience in the UK (I'll get around to writing up the first terrible train ride soon, I think).

So we arrived at Queen Street Station in Glasgow around quarter to ten to catch the ten o'clock train. It was a bit crowded (no surprise due to the festival and all) and Annmarie was a bit apprehensive as she doesn't hold the public transport system here in terribly high regard. Anyway I got some money out at an ATM and bought two tickets to Edinburgh. Getting back just in time for the train. The platform was announced at the last minute (as is the norm in the UK) and a huge crowd surged out to the train. The train was absolutely packed and as we didn't want to stand for almost a whole hour we thought that we'd wait till the next one (they run every quarter hour).

The next train is canceled at the last minute (ten fourteen). OK, we thought, that's not too unusual. Then, suddenly it's reinstated at ten sixteen on platform six. Fine then, we rush over with the rest of the crowd and manage to find a table quickly get the pram and bags stowed and settle in. Some of the people across the aisle from us were joking about the mad rush and Annmarie joked that they would probably send us back over to a different train. Which they did (tempting fate me thinks). So everybody has to head over to platform three. By this point it is about ten twenty five and so this is basically the ten thirty train and so there is the crowd from the ten fifteen and the ten thirty all pouring onto the same train. It is absolutely packed and no seats whatsoever, so we decide to once more wait for another train.

Annmarie is rather annoyed by this entire debacle and decides to make a complaint. She heads over to a group of what look like Scotrail workers (they had ID badges) and some of then look like they might be more managing types. None of them seemed to want to make eye contact with Annmarie and actually look rather uncomfortable at being asked. They said that there was nothing they could do and it was no use complaining to them and to go to the ticket office instead. The queue at the ticket office was huge and we couldn't be bothered waiting that long. Annmarie found another worker, a younger one, and went to ask him how to go about asking for a refund. He started off by trying to deflect her and to suggest that she "focus on the problem" and how "she can solve it herself". This of course ignores the fact that our problem is out of our control (they run the trains) and that the solution we were seeking was also for them to produce. I didn't hear the beginning of the conversation, but when I arrived I heard the guy say "running a railway is very complex and not everything can run smoothly" or something to that effect and Annmarie replied with "have you been on a train in Germany? The Germans CAN run a railway smoothly" once again something like that. I thought at that point that it was probably better to let her get on with it and I went to buy some water for the trip since everyone was getting thirsty. When Annmarie got back we went and caught the 11 o'clock train and finally got to Edinburgh. Annmarie later told me that the conversation stepped through how bad the railways are run, the fact that the company often makes up bogus excuses like switching problems when it's just that they are disorganised and that he had come back from New Zealand six months ago and now wants to go back.

Once we finally got the Edinburgh, we tracked down Kate and sat outside at a nice Italian cafe down George Street and had a nice catch up chat, which was good. After that we went for another wander around the festival. We walked up the Royal Mile, a particularly nice old street that has historical significance.

The Royal Mile leads from Holyrood palace (which I think is a royal residence that used to be an abbey some time ago) and leads all the way up to Edinburgh castle. Very lovely there and we found a french chocolate bakery/patisserie or something and two traditional fudge makers (we were in a bit of a junk food mood at the time). We also saw the new Scottish parliament building. In case you have not heard much of the news about it, it was many years late, and had a cost increase of almost 10 times (I think it was meant to cost about £50 million and ended up costing about £490 million) and is a super modern design that is now the subject of much debating, especially in the papers. Personally I think that it is a bit over the top and doesn't fit the surroundings well at all being in the middle of the Royal Mile, but just so long as the materials don't weather badly it should end up being quite accepted. The sad part about the building is that the original designer didn't live to see it completed.

Once we got back down to the festival end of the Mile, we wandered up through the crowd and watched some of the performers. We stopped to watch a girl singing songs from musicals. Willow asked her if she could sing something from Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and she obliged with Doll on a Music Box, which Willow of course loved. After that we wandered up further through the festival and looked for somewhere to have dinner, but everything was VERY booked out and so we trained it back to Glasgow, with a much better train ride that time, and got takeaway pizza from Pizza Express.

Anyway, we are about to head off to find the farmers market in Partick, so I'll finish this when we get home later tonight.

A little art for art's sake

2004-09-10T15:25:00.000+01:00

Just thought that I'd quickly post up another link. Not this time to someone else's material, but to my own. A few weeks ago, Annmarie's brother visited here in Glasgow before he head back off to Australia (he had just finished studying at a University in Freiburg in Germany). While he was here we visited Stirling and showed him the castle. I got a few snippets of film of him on the Pentax while I was all interested in time lapse filming. Also at the time, one of the other consultants at Integria was dabbling with film editing on his computer and I decided to have a go too. Well you can see the results of my attempts here [warning, 2.6 MB].

Contact is established

2004-09-09T15:08:00.000+01:00

Well my brothers are now confirmed as having arrived alive and well (if a bit tired) here in the UK. They'll be spending the next week or so checking out Lon don with it's many museums and galleries and maybe even taking some time out in one of it's many fine old pubs. After that they are off to Whales to see a rally. Hope they have fun.
--
Update:
Sorry to all those readers out there, but I seem to have made a couple of slight errors. After London they are going to Wales to see a rally. Sorry again for the confusion.

Britt's Japan Journal: Questions and Misconceptions

2004-09-09T10:11:00.000+01:00

Well I think that it's about time that I participated in one of the great blogging traditions of cross linking to the blog of someone I have no idea who they are. Anyway, I found this post while randomly jumping through Blogger and found it highly amusing: Questions and Misconceptions

私の兄弟は東京を訪問し損った。

2004-09-08T13:09:00.000+01:00

Well, I can't pretend that I'm not a little bit disappointed. My brothers Paul and Joseph are at this very minute flying somewhere over eastern Europe, winging their way to the UK. They'll be landing at Heathrow at about 4pm GMT. When I loaded up the old browser this morning, I noticed that Joe's blog has had an update. Checking to see if he may have put up a last minute goodbye message, I came across this post.

I was shocked to say the least. After spending a good deal of my time, helping him plan an all nighter trip into Tokyo City itself, it seems that the nay-sayers have poisoned the well of 日本の旅行. He's wussed out (or as one of my colleagues here, Paul Muldoon, put it "he girled out", how delightfully Scottish). So one of my best opportunities to vicariously visit the Land of the Rising Sun and the Great Eastern Capital has slipped silently away...

End of August!!

2004-08-22T22:19:00.000+01:00

Damn, once again it has been a whole month since my last post. Well I guess that I will eventually start posting more often. Anyway this weekend was quite an interesting one and so has prompted this update.

On Saturday, we headed off to Edinburgh to visit the festivals currently running there. We had not really got around to arranging to see any actual shows, but Annmarie had particularly wanted to see some live jazz music. The actual jazz festival was over but we found a lovely pub/restaraunt (the Eighty Queen Street or 80QS) that was hosting some jazz bands there that afternoon.

We saw what was apparently the "house band" who apparantly play there regularly. They were really quite good. The hotel seems to have jazz bands quite often so I'm going to have to remember to bring my brother Paul there when he gets up here (he's a bit of a jazz buff, and they have some cocktails made with Glenfiddich, not to mentions some nice beers). The really odd part of the afternoon was that Willow and Gabriel seemed to really like the music. We had lunch there and Willow was annoyed that she couldn't see the band. So when we finished, we sat over near the band and Willow wanted a seat near them to see them better. She even wanted to talk to them during their break and she got to play the drums when they finished. A good time for all.

After that we walked around the festival and saw some of the street performers then walked down some of the Royal Mile and off to the train back to Glasgow.

The Sunday was quite nice too. We went to a park in the west end where Willows new school were having a meet and greet to let the kids get to know each other before school starts. Willow ran around with the other kids and had a great time (we also had a nice little picnic lunch too). Funnily enough one of kids who Willow was playing with was a little boy called Oliver who happened to have a friend called Tommy (Willow has a pair of cousins called Tommy and Oliver).

Quick note...

2004-07-20T11:24:00.000+01:00

Hello all!

Well it's been ages since I last posted and although much time has passed, not a lot has happened. The biggest change is of course that I am working. I have been taken on by a company called Integria Solutions who have appointed me their official "Technical Support Consultant" meaning general runabout tech monkey, but sounds better on a business card. The company is setting out on doing printing strategies for large business to help them reduce costs and I will be, at first, their technical assistance. I am hoping to find my way into doing more of the business consulting, but I'll have to see as I go.

Not a whole lot else has been happening, but we have seen the inside of a couple of hospitals. Willow fell over while running about one evening and split open her lower lip, so she needed 4 stitches (or sutures as some of our more medically inclined audience will know). She needed to go to the yorkhill children's hospital as no one else would do the stitching as the being on her lip meant that it was a difficult place and the regular medical staff were a bit nervous of her age. But all went well and the stitches are gone and the cut is healing nicely.

Anyway, I have to shoot off, but as always, I will try to keep the site more up to date in future (promises, promises...).

Cheers

Site upgrade

2004-05-13T23:08:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone. Blogger has recently been upgraded, so don't be surprised if the appearance changes occasionally. Also there are a couple of neat new features added, one in particular is comments. You can now all add comments to the end of blog entries, so go crazy. Please remember that this site is for a general audience, so keep the comments civil ;-)

New Fridge!!

2004-05-13T00:15:00.000+01:00

Well after about three months on the road, I have finally had a non-Australian hair cut. Good thing too, my hair was starting to look decidedly ragged and mopish, not the thing for job seeking at all. Since I have also re-acquired my suits etc., and have had them dry cleaned, I now look quite ... err ... spiffy. Other than that, things are mostly not too bad. We have decided that the pathetic quality of our fridge requires us to replace it with a model more suited to a small family trying to live healthily on a modest budget in one of the least healthy countries in the world (they think that chips are vegetables, they have obsessive sweet tooths (or is that sweet teeth??) and they deep fry everything, we were told that Edinburgh has the dubious distinction of being the home of the deep fried mars bar). The new fridge is on order and will be delivered on Saturday. So only three more days till abundant fruit and legumes at hand in the kitchen.

Well once again, it is quite late here so I guess I'll leave it here and it's off to bed. It's been good to hear now and then from people back in Oz, so keep any communications coming.

Pics at last

2004-05-10T12:23:00.000+01:00

Well everyone, I'm just putting up a quick post to let anyone who was waiting (and reads this) that I have finally put pictures up on the web. You can find them here. Please don't hesitate to email me if you want bigger, printable versions of individual pictures.

Southerly Travels

2004-05-05T00:35:00.000+01:00

Well a week or two on and once more a lot has happened. This weekend, we rented the 7 seater, a nice diesel powered Renault Espace. Very nice car. Keycard with a button to start it, automatic hand brake and the whole dashboard is like the command deck of the Enterprise.

We had arranged to get the car on the Wednesday evening so we could get started early Thursday morning. The car company called up on the Tuesday to say that they needed to pick up another car from somewhere and if I didn’t mind dropping the driver off, I could have the car a day early for no extra cost. I of course jumped at the offer and we drove down to Edinburgh on the Tuesday and popped into an organic grocer (you can do things like that when you have a car, or so I’ve heard).

On the Wednesday, since we had the car all day, we drove north up the western side of Loch Lomond, the largest loch in Scotland (for those that don’t know, a loch is simply a lake). The country side out there was absolutely glorious. We had a wonderful drive and had brought some sandwiches and other picnic lunch things and had lunch at a park on the bank of the lake. We then drove up to the top of the loch and then headed east to Stirling. Although we got to Stirling quite late in the day, and the rain clouds had rolled in, the town was absolutely beautiful. We thought that Edinburgh was the most beautiful city in the UK. It is apparently one of the most complete examples of an historic city (in large part because it was almost untouched during the war, Glasgow was heavily bombed as it had all the industry like munitions and shipping manufacturing, whereas Edinburgh has none really) and is a world heritage site (yep the whole inner city). The inner city has two distinct areas in it called the Old Town and the New Town. The Old Town is a complete example of a medieval city and the New Town is a complete example of a Georgian city (Glasgow, by the way, is one of the best surviving examples of a Victorian city). It is possibly one of the nicest cities in Europe in my opinion, definitely up there with Lucerne and Strasbourg. Well Stirling was as nice as Edinburgh, just a lot smaller. So we had pizza there then popped home.

So Thursday morning arrived and we got off to a slightly late start which was probably not such a bad thing as we missed all the early morning work traffic. We took a scenic route through the country which was quite lovely. Half way there I suddenly thought that the country side reminded me of Bob the Builder, I turned to Annmarie to tell her and she said that it reminded her of Heartbeat, which it did. So we both started singing the Heartbeat theme and Annmarie got this strange idea that maybe we should get the Heartbeat soundtrack for future road trips. So after a lovely drive (including stopping off to listen to windmills) we arrived at Saltcoats to pick up my Mum. After a bit of fussing with her luggage we headed off to London.

The drive down was, though quite long, largely uneventful (possibly due to the skill of the driver, but I’ll leave that to others to decide). After a bit of travel of some smaller roads we largely stuck to the main motorways. We stopped off in several places to give everyone a stretch, especially the kids, and to keep at bay the evils of exhaustion mixed with driving. One of the stopovers was at a services spot on a lake with some ducks. Although it was quite windy, Annmarie got out our lunch supplies and Willow’s birdie bread. I went into the services building with my Mum to get some coffee. While we were looking in the souvenir shop on our way back, Annmarie and the kids turned up. Apparently Willow was scared because there were some big black birds, so we all ate lunch inside.

On the trip down, my Mum told us some stories about my Dad and their times living around the north of England. One of them happened just before they were married. They were engaged and had bought a house in a town somewhere in the middle of England (I can’t remember were exactly) and since they were not married yet, Dad moved into the house and Mum rented a flat which happened to be on the other side of a river and the motorway. Not long before the wedding, my Dad’s workmates decided to have a stag night and took him out drinking. In the wee hours of the morning, my Mum was woken up by the sound of stones on her window. She looked out to see Dad out in front. He was quite obviously drunk and was complaining that he couldn’t find his keys and couldn’t get into the house and needed to get ready for work in the morning. Mum came down to take him back home to discover that he was soaking wet, with twigs and sticks and slime all over him. Mum was, of course, furious and took him back home and let him in, admonishing him for losing his keys and for wandering around drunk at that hour. Later that morning, his work friends turned up at Mum’s house apologising that Dad had disappeared from one of their houses after being put to bed on the sofa and they didn’t know what happened to him. It appeared that he had been put to bed on the sofa and had gotten up to go home, had lost his keys on the way and then had crossed both the river and the motorway to get to Mums house despite the existence of a perfectly good bridge. Also it was a Friday night and he didn’t need to go to work the next day at all.

Another of the stories involved the both of them moving house and driving many miles along motorways, with a washing machine in the front passenger seat, a baby (my brother Peter) in a capsule with my Mum in the back, along with a rolled up carpet. In a mini.

Anyway, it is once more getting very late, so I’ll continue this story another time, and hopefully get back to Tokyo too.

G’nite.

Glasgow looks like home, for now...

2004-04-25T00:32:00.001+01:00

Well, time has passed and we have now (almost) left behind the hotel, jet setting lifestyle. Almost because we have one last trip to make next weekend (May day weekend). We will be renting a car (well a 7 seater van) and driving back down south to Sutton in Greater London to drop off my Mum who is heading back to Australia and to collect the rest of our luggage. In the meantime, we have now found and settled into our new flat in Merchant City in the heart of Glasgow. We have all the amenities and utilities arranged and, especially now that we have the prospect of regular bills coming in, I am now looking for work in earnest.

Glasgow is turning out to be a very comfortable place to live. In many ways it is quite like Adelaide. The people are quite laid back and friendly (well, most of them, but this is Scotland) and the layout of the city is rather grid like. There seems to be quite a lot of restaurants, nightclubs and cafes (although with kids we might not be able to see quite so many of them). We have still yet to find a good place for lots of fresh veggies and fruits (we also currently have an inestimably small fridge) but haven’t found the farmer’s markets yet. We also have to look around the west end to see what kind of shops are round there.

As an aside, for anyone that has wondered about the funny little phenomenon of west end / east end in cities in the UK, there is an interesting explanation. In most UK cities, especially ones that had a lot of industry, there tends to be a west end that is posh and upper class, and an east end that is working class and common. This is to do with the fact that in the UK the prevailing winds are mostly from the west off of the Atlantic Ocean and towards the European coast. This means that the pollution from the factories would be blown towards the eastern side of the city, meaning that the east was usually full of smoke and grime from the factories. Thus the rich bought in the cleaner west side of the city and the poor in the grimier east.

So we cut the difference and chose the Merchant City in the centre of the town. Merchant City used to be a warehouse and market area which also housed (and still houses) a number of civil building for the city. Now it seems to be in the midst of a redevelopment rush as a lot of the old warehouses are being converted into apartments and so forth. Unfortunately we happen to be living right next to one of these redevelopments in progress, still, it’s probably why the rent was so reasonable. The funny thing about that is that all the building sites I’ve seen in the UK is that they have these signs that apologise for the noise and inconvenience and often state a membership in an association of builders that are courteous to the general public around them (no late noise, cleaning up rubble, making sure that dust isn‘t a problem, etc). So I find it amusing that they don’t seem to work weekends and they all stop around 5-6 pm. From what I remember in Australia, most people would be ecstatic if building sites followed that ideal.

Anyway it’s getting late and I’m off to bed. For those that are interested, I’ve made a quick web gallery of some of the photos I’ve taken and will try to get it uploaded soon.

Cheers

Yes, we're not dead yet....

2004-04-07T20:03:00.000+01:00

As Heather has pointed out to me (thanks Heather :-), It has been quite a long time since my last entry into the blog, but something has happened that has made writing much easier. We have bought a laptop for use in the UK for both my and Annmarie’s studying and for doing other things like looking for work (which is something I am currently doing properly) etc. For those who might be interested it’s a Compaq Presario 2100. So this now means that I can write up entries before hand and then upload them onto the web when I next connect to the net (the internet café nearby has facilities for bringing in your own laptop and connecting that to the net).

We are currently holed up in sunny Glasgow (the friendly city is the official catch line I believe). We are staying in what should be our last fancy hotel for some time (the Radisson SAS, I highly recommend it, especially the breakfast buffet) as we are currently looking for somewhere more permanent. We have looked around for a 2 bedroom flat in our perceived price range, but being the snobs that we are, we are now looking for 1 bedroom flats so we can be in the west end (there‘s just a better class of people there). It now looks like Annmarie will not be working for the short term (it‘s going to take longer than we originally thought for it to get settled), so we have dicided to change our plans and head up north. Annmarie thinks Londoners are all too sullen and grumpy anyway, and thinks that the Scottish seem much cheerier in general. So now it looks like I am looking for proper daytime work in the country of my birth.

But, of course, everone is probably more interested in the previous couple months travel. The previous entries were all rushed attempts at getting something up, so maybe I should just turn the clock back to the beginning and recap the whole trip…

Tokyo

Tokyo was everything that the clichés make it out to be. It was bewildering, energetic, chaotic, enormous yet full of a strange sense of calm and tranquillity. It sometimes felt like those odd little bits of film you see occasionally where a single figure sits still amongst a bustling crown with the film sped up. Other times it just felt like we were back home, that there was no pressure of the largest city on earth.

Of course our trip there was not without drama (what journey to somewhere as exotic as the orient would be devoid of such things). Oddly enough, it seemed that most of our problems came from following the standard tourist travel advice (combined with not realising that when your on holiday, other people have weekends).

When we arrived in Narita airport, we were of course tired (flying with 2 kids is hard work, even when they behave) and in a foreign land. We were also over half an hour behind schedule. Once we got through customs (the most thorough and detailed customs check of the whole trip) and put our bigger bags into storage at the airport, we needed to get to our hotel.

It wasn’t actually a hotel though, it was a actually a nice, budget version of a traditional Japanese inn called a “ryokan”. This is a word that we seem to never have pronounced correctly once in the whole time we stayed in Japan. Every time we told someone we were staying in a ryokan, we got strange, confused looks till we changed it to “small hotel” then we got looks of relief and recognition.

Anyway, we were in Narita airport, with bags safely stowed. I had already planned that we catch a train called the Narita Express (or the limited express, depending on times) from a station located conveniently under the terminal, out to a station in Ueno, from where we would switch deftly to a subway train on the Oedo line, and travel three stops to the neighbourhood in which our accommodation was located then walk, probably for only maybe five to ten minutes to arrive at our destination. As it happens, we now know that had we followed this course, I would have been just about right with map reading for the final walk aside.

Instead, Annmarie just wanted to get there as quickly as possible...

Last day in Switzerland

2004-02-17T09:16:00.000Z

Hello all. This will be our last day in Switzerland. This afternoon we head off to Germany to meet up with Annmarie's brother Justin in Freiburg. We had a great time in Lucern (very pretty city that one, absolute picturebook town) and are having a wonderful time here in Basel. In our opinion both have been better than Zurich, though I suspect that Zurich is really geared for the international business types, being the Ã¼ber banking city that it is supposed to be. The biggestdisappointmentt for me is that we had to return the Saab yesterday, but driving over the border to get rid of the big luggage was a big help.

So gotta run, we will be heading off to catch a train in a few hours, then it will be next stop Freiburg Germany!

Greetings from Zurich

2004-02-15T05:39:00.000Z

Hello all. I've finally managed to get to another web terminal to make another update. We have left Tokyo (to much dissapointment by all) and are now in Zurich. It's a pity that I haven't been able to write more in this journal, but who would have thought that traveling through and about foreign cities with two small kids would have been such hard work!

The rest of the Tokyo stay was as fantastic as the first half. Zurich has a tough job to impress us after Tokyo. The ramen noodle bar I finally found was just fantastic and I want to return to Tokyo just to have more noodles. We still have 20,000¥ left over, but we are already planning for a two week stopover on our way back (some talk has even been made of living there in the future).

We managed to see quite a few of the main Tokyo city centres (Shinjuku, Ueno, Hongo, Akihabara, Tochome and a couple of others, we of course didn't get to any of the nightlife spots like Roppongi). We also did a couple of touristy things like ride on the Big O. The Big O is a giant ferris wheel that takes 15 minutes to do one round. It's in the Tokyo dome plaza. Tokyo dome is a giant baseball stadium, amusement park, shopping centre and hotel all in one. We think that they may have played some of the world cup soccer there, but I can't really remember. The view from the top of the Big O was incredible, we went up at night and the lights just went on for ever, building and sky scrapers went to the horizon.

Akihabara was quite amazing too. For those who don't know, Tokyo seems to be full of small regions that contain shops dedicated to certain types of shopping (although you can find those shops in other, more general areas). So there is a bookshop district, a sporting goods district, and Akihabara is the electronics district (so of course I was honour bound to visit). It was quite amazing. The place was at least 3-4 times the size of rundle mall, and looked kinda like the royal show, but with a lot more neon and each stall being a 4-8 story building. The variety and quantity of electronics goods was simply astounding. This was the point in time that I started to really want to live in Tokyo. I also found out that the REALLY cool phones (foma) that I wanted to get were not that expensive, but were all hard wired to be used only through DoCoMo (a Japanese telco) so no sim cards. That means that if I want one...

The train ride back out to the airport was an eye opener too. The ride was an express that took about 57 minutes and about 47 minutes of it was through city (not suburbs but tall buildings). It really struck home just how big the place really is. Narita airport on the way out was stunningly busy but the people at JAL scooped us out of the crowd and wisked us through checkin, even helping with bags and kids. JAL seem to be a really wonderful airline. The flight to Zurich would have been really great if a certain small boy had actually taken a nap during the flight and not spent the final 40 minutes screaming and crying. But oh well, you can't get a perfect trip on our budget.

Landing in Zurich was equally simple, passport checks took about 30 seconds for all of us and we out onto the terminal in no time at all where we were met by Annmarie's brother Justin (very helpful with all the bags and all). We got to the hotel easy (a shuttle bus called the Ben-Bus) and settled in fine.

Zurich has been very lovely and picturesque. The food here is heavier, but generally of good quality, but also a bit more expensive than Tokyo. We took a train up the mountain to a place called Uetliburg and saw some snow (Willow has been pining to see snow ever since we left Adelaide). The snow was fun and Willow was quite sorry when we had to go back to the city. Unfortnately, the day was a little bit cloudy, so we didn't get to see all the alps.

Saturday we arranged to rent a car since catching a train with 10 bags and the kids didn't sound like fun to us. It looked like it was going to be a manual, since that was the only station wagon they had left, but when we arrived at the car rental place, the guy said that an automatic had been returned and I could have that one if I liked, but it was a little bit more expensive. I said yes since both myself and Annmarie would probably be more comfortable with a auto. Then I asked what kind of a car it was, and he tells me it is a Saab (Woo Hoo). So today we are driving to Lucurn in a Saab.

Anyway, I'd better get back and get ready to go (we want to leave early today). Hope everyone back in Australia is doing well. I'll write more soon.

Cheers
Damien

Greetings from Tokyo

2004-02-10T12:10:00.000Z

Hello to everyone back home in Australia (and to those ahead in Europe).

Tokyo is fantastic, and language barriers aside, myself and Annmarie have been wondering if we may have chosen the wrong city to live in for a year. In any case, we are already planning to save up to stay here for a couple of weeks on our way back. The food is fantastic, the city is awe inspiring and the people are wonderful (at least we think they are, they could all be insulting us to our faces and we would never know...). The whole place is so neat and orderly.

We have been wondering about all the stories we have heard of Tokyo being expensive, we are using well under what we budgeted and are eating some great food. I put it down to the fact that we are eating local and avoiding the obvious touristy locations and fancier restraunts. Also we are staying in a ryokan (more traditional inn, kinda more a hostel than a hotel) and we are staying just next to Tokyo University, so maye the area caters to students. But then again, prices in the department stores seem not to different to back in Oz. Our big problem with food is actually that the Japanese do everything too well. Even dounuts are fantastic, anyone coming here has to try `Mister Donut`, amazing! We think we might get rich if we can find out how they make them and open a shop in Oz. The local burger places are great too (Mos Burger for one). Everything is fresh and light and nothing is oily. Local food is cheap and delicious (oishii desu) too.

Unfortunately, my more detailed account of our travels was destroyed by a system crash on this Japanese language Power Mac, 45 minutes of writing down the tube. So this little update will have to do for now. I`ll try to get more up soon.

Anyway, it`s getting a bit late and I`m out on my own looking for a ramen noodle bar for dinner (Annmarie is exausted and had dinner in with the kids), so until next time, cya all.

Good to go!

2004-02-05T13:47:00.000Z

Well we are finally packed and ready. It's just past midnight and I'll need to be up again in about 3 hours to get ready to go. We are all very excited and I am convinced that I'll have forgotten something. Oh well. For those from the office, here are some pictures of my last day at work.

Cya all, next post will be from Tokyo (and hopefully a bit longer)