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.

The Social Network

I forgot to mention in the last post seeing 'The Social Network' with Rene at the Dendy, Portside. It was some ten days ago, but it still sticks clearly in my mind. A very interesting film full of people I'd rather not meet in real life. The lead character (all are real people portrayed in this movie) is autistic, and although never mentioned by name, this characteristic pervades his reaction to what's happening around him and the way he interacts with others. I'm assuming the events and characters are portrayed quite realistically, and if so it must have been surreal seeing oneself played in a film that starts around 2003. Please see it, you won't be disappointed.

One week until the summer vacation!

Here in Australia summer is upon us, whereas in Europe winter is very evident indeed. The picture below is from the south of The Netherlands, Son, and is of the back garden of Rene's sister. We were there nearly a year ago in the snow. I suspect snow might be somewhat warmer than just frost and ice. This was Saturday afternoon.

Here in Brisbane we have had the most unusual weather, with persistent showers for days and days. In recent years it would have been very hot, but like today, a minimum of 19 and a max of 26/27 is quite typical of the past couple of months. We've already clocked up the wettest September/October in 38 years. I still prefer our weather to Europe's.

The once every two years Ashes Test series is on again, and Brisbane is hosting the first test match. If you don't know, it's cricket, and the Holy Grail of cricket is contested every two years with the two countries taking turns. Each match lasts five days, there are five 5 day Tests, and fans queue from before 7am to enter the grounds and prepare for the 10am start. Rene drove past 'The Gabba' last Thursday at 6:30am and the first fans of 40 000 were lining up to enter the grounds nicknamed 'The Gabbatoir'.

The airport has handled thousands of fans for The Ashes plus this weekend 5000 Schoolies (students who have finished Year 12 high school) flying into Queensland for the annual rite of passage. Most head towards the Gold Coast. Yesterday they were like lambs, probably because they'd got up really early to get to the airport in Sydney or Melbourne before jetting north to us. Needless to say Brisbane Airport is increasing passenger numbers every month - great for Brisbane, even greater for the Queensland economy.

Catholic schools finish the year a week earlier than state schools. I finish on Thursday for around seven weeks. I'll continue doing volunteer shifts at the airport because that is enjoyable, but I want to get stuck into a very overgrown and weedy garden. The incredible amounts of regular rain have ensured that much of what was planted less than two years ago needs a very, very heavy pruning and shaping.

To break up the vacation Rene and I are heading to the South Island of New Zealand for our first anniversary. We fly into Christchurch, the centre of a 7.1 earthquake last September, for two nights at a B&B just west of Christchurch, located in the middle of a vineyard. Nearby is the Langdale Winery where we are to have lunch on our anniversary day (30th). That evening we dine with the hosts. On New Year's Eve we move back into Christchurch for the evening's big concert in Cathedral Square followed by fireworks. We are staying at the Crowne Plaza, the largest hotel in the city and easily escaped damage in the earthquake. New Zealand builds to take into consideration its nickname of 'the shaky isles'.

We have a further eight nights to fill in, but we have a hire car from Day 1 and can go anywhere. I know that we'd like to go to Milford Sound, the Franz Josef Glacier plus the cities of Dunedin and Invercargill.
Rene is planning the last nights, so it should be exciting since he's been there before, but I never have. I've been twice to the North Island, but everyone says the South Island (or Middle Earth as it has become known) is like the whole of the world's seriously impressive scenery rolled into one place. Can't wait!

This final week is crazy - Tuesday night is trivia and dinner (as usual), Wednesday is the Dutch Alumni Christmas Dinner at Portside, Thursday night we're at the Greek Club for a 3 course dinner, Greek cooking lessons, dancing lessons plus ouzo. Friday I dine with one of my schools at a favourite restaurant of mine for lunch, and Friday evening cake and coffee at a friends home. No doubt next weekend will be busy, like this one, where I did a long shift at the airport and today we had lunch out at Sandgate and drinks at a new watering hole there - the old Sandgate post office, now a lovely bar and grille.

I have not mentioned the tragedy of the lost miners of New Zealand, the Royal nuptials announced this week, same sex marriage law crawling towards some positive resolution hopefully soon or the delightful opportunity to meet up with a friend who has gone to San Francisco to marry and set up home with her new husband. I haven't even mentioned that a family of dear friends who go to Europe every year for three months in their motor home kept in England have returned with joyous tales of their travels.

Finally, dear Rene joins me in loathing the season of joy soon to be upon us. As a counter to this, I purchased two spare tickets from friends to join them at the Concert Hall on December 11 to enjoy 'The Spirit of Christmas'. Rene was playing the poker machines when I was offered the seats, so he wasn't consulted. He was somewhat surprised when I told him upon his return. The Queensland Symphony Orchestra, choirs and singers will force feed us both for a couple of hours. I intend to ply the Dutchman with plenty of spirit before the event. He'll be 'ho, ho, hoing' throughout the night - and so will I.

2011 visitors

NEWSFLASH Rene and I have been invited to join his Dutch sister Claartje and her husband Jan on Straddie in October next year to celebrate their third anniversary at the restaurant, Amis, where they had their reception in 2008. Seriously exciting news! That bouquet was thrown into the sea as they left Straddie last time as a gesture to encourage their return to the island. We look forward to it happening.