Just some extra news (which appears here first - go figure!)

This building is going to be built in Sydney for a university and is already nicknamed 'The Treehouse'. What a stunningly organic design. The following link gives you more detail. http://www.architectureanddesign.com.au/article/Frank-Gehry-unveils-his-Sydney-tree-house/526653.aspx

The second week of the vacation I was having lunch at Sandgate with friends when the most amazing storm hit Brisbane. We have had records broken all over the place regarding this year's cold, heat and rainfall.

The Aussie dollar is again at parity with the Greenback. As we head off to NZ tomorrow, the Aussie $1 is NZD 1.35 - this exchange rate is both good and bad for this country. We'll treat it for the next fortnight as good for us.

My Malaysian friend Malar is experiencing her dream Christmas - in Paris with kids and snow. The Trocadero looks wonderful - unless you actually want to go anywhere!

My favourite incredible picture of the year - in Guatamala - a huge sink hole in the middle of the city. Unbelievable!

Beetles mating (what will Grandpa think?).

Our friends, Frank and Edwina, have their beautiful home featured on the web page of an architecture company. They had their Fairfield home renovated and extended, and this was the main part of the result. Most impressive.

Don't bother reading this Peter - it's about the weather!

Everyone has been surprised by the amount of cold weather in Western Europe, including the locals. I hear first hand from passengers who arrive back after having great inconvenience from the unusually brutal cold weather. This London scene (below) features the famous iconic double decker. At the bottom of this post there's detail of the new replacement double decker due out in time for the London Olympics. Very smart indeed!

A Malaysian teaching colleague has ventured to Europe with her family to enjoy a white Christmas, plus the markets. This, below, was Frankfurt this year. Malar has her dream fulfilled! Exquisitely pretty - but bloody cold!

Even Florence (below) didn't escape the chill. It looks brilliant, though, and reminds me of January this year when Rene and I had snow in Seville for the first time in 54 years - not a traditional scene.

A very 21st Century look for the iconic London bus. Love the way light gets into the stairwells now.

More news from Brisbane...

I don't like Christmas - at all! Not news to my friends and followers, but I have to tell you that it was quite enjoyable this year because it involved loads of dinners at friends' homes and in restaurants plus lots of entertaining in our home. Rene and I have been dining out for the past four weeks with a quite full diary of engagements. There are so very many I can't start to mention them all, but thanks to one and all here in Brisbane for making the season truly remarkable.

Christmas Day was spent doing what I love best - working at the airport as a volunteer. From 7-11am I smiled at hundreds of tired faces, greeted smiling children and ho ho hoed my way through the morning. I raced home and changed, then with Rene we drove across to Capalaba to have lunch with my nephew and his partner. There were folk from both families, and that allowed me to meet a lot of new people as well as my brother Stephen's large extended family. We retired to the quiet of home and an evening of television.

On Christmas Eve we had dinner and drinks at my friends of some 35+ years, Di and Torquil. Their daughter (my god daughter) Amy had left for Wales at the weekend and had taken five days to get there, with two nights in Larnaca, Cyprus, as the flight tried to get to London Heathrow. Even after finally arriving they couldn't get the family from Wales to pick them up, plus the bus booked to replace the pickup couldn't be taken, and there was nowhere for Amy, her partner Alex and baby son Gruff to stay at LHR, so they hired a car and drove to Newport where they stayed with friends of Alex until the rest of his family finally fought their way down the valley to pick them up the following day. All in all it was a memorable trip for them.

Sadly, it has taken this disaster at Heathrow to wake up the operator (Spanish owned) BAA to invest some serious money in snow clearing equipment. Penny pinching by BAA to create extra dividends for shareholders meant something like and extra GBP 570 000 was spent this year following last year's heavy snow. Gatwick spent nearly GBP 10m. Guess which airport coped better? This is the same company (BAA) that failed to heed advice to train all operators at the new T5 - instead deciding, along with BA, to merely train 10% of staff, and they'd train the others. We all know what an unmitigated disaster that was! Yet for 6 months prior the baggage handling system worked faultlessly, yet on opening day ground staff hadn't even been issued with parking permits for the new T5 space, therefore traipsed back to old car parks and got to the terminal too late for the start of the build up of baggage to start piling up. Why? BAA and BA saved money by not training everyone first. I'm sure the Spanish owners lost a lot from that debacle. This recent one will only add to that - how on earth does LHR (let alone Brussels) run out of deicing fluid?


Boxing Day for us was quieter, and I repeated my shift at the airport - this time on departures - but I was quite tired this day. After the first couple of hours I really felt flat, but I still managed to smile a lot and assist, but i was glad when it finished. Rene and I both had an hour's snooze after lunch then drove across town to our American friends Polly and Kit where we had coffee, cake, and later a lovely glass of wine.

It is one year since we arrived in The Netherlands to get married. This Thursday is the first anniversary, and unlike the snowy picture above, we will spend it in a vineyard ensconced within an A frame cottage - the B & B sounds brilliant - there will be photos in the next update. The vineyard is just west of Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand. We leave tomorrow morning. Whilst there, we will spend New Year's Eve in Christchurch welcoming in the earliest New Year's Day in the world - NZ is exactly 12 hours ahead of GMT, 3 hours ahead of Brisbane.

Happy New Year

This snowy mountain top may appear to be from the northern hemisphere, but it is in fact the top of Mount Wellington, Hobart, the state capital of Tasmania. It was -3C on Boxing Day, and stayed this way most of the day. Down below at sea level the city of Hobart was around 15 - still bloomin' cold!

This photo (above) was taken two weeks ago during a bout of bad weather in the Central Highlands of NSW. This was at the start of summer in Australia this year. A friend mentioned yesterday that I always seem to harp on about the weather in my blog, and I guess I'm reinforcing that conception yet again this post. It really fascinates me.

These are the two new silk doonas I brought back from Shanghai. They are a lovely weight and very sensual to sleep under. This was the first time we put them on the bed, with both pillows having silk covers. Since the first time, we have a silk cover on the top pillow and a regular pillowslip on the lower for actually putting your head on - much nicer (they were too slippery for our taste). Clicking on all three pictures gives greater detail.

This is all for now. A memorable month. I'm looking forward to a bit of a rest in New Zealand, but I'm not counting on it - I love touring and seeing new places and meeting new people.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM OWEN AND RENE.