Geo-tagging! WTF is that?

This got my geek antennae all excited... flickr.com is where we have started to upload and store our digital photos and they've started allowing geo-tagging of every image. Geo-tagging allows you to map exactly where each photo was taken. I've spent some time updating the images we've uploaded so far and in most cases I've located each image pretty close to exactly where it was shot. So for example if you view the image of Jo on a bridge in Central Park you can click on the [map] link (on the right) and up will pop a window with the exact location marked on a satellite photo. So for that image you can see exactly where the bridge is. Man that's awesome! Clearly I need to get out more...

Andy out.

Boomerang'ed to Montreal

Andy here, I'm back in Montreal for the next four days. On my own this time, I think Jo's glad to have the car for a while. The kids are on their last week of summer holidays as they go back to school next Tuesday, Monday being the Labour Day holiday (awesome! holiday weekend!). Our weekend is looking busy as Toronto has a 'Melbourne Show' style event going on at the moment called the Canadian National Exhibition (or CNE for short). There's cultural displays, rides, fireworks and an airshow. An F-22 Raptor is performing on Saturday (1st time ever outside the US) and there's also going to be an F-117 Stealth fighter flying, both of these aircraft have never made it to the Avalon airshow back home so that should be cool. Also planning on going to the local drive-in theatre, maybe Sunday night, should be a hoot as we've never taken the kids to a drive-in.

Anyways I flew up this morning so I'm pretty stuffed after a 5am wake up call, luckily work wasn't too stressfull today so that's a good thing. I was going to go out for dinner and hit Baton Rouge, the outstanding ribs place, but it's a bit of a walk from the Hilton and I don't think I can be stuffed frankly. NFL pre-season is underway and the Greenbay Packers play the Cincinatti Bengals in about 40 minutes, so I might just order room service, raid the mini bar and settle in for the game. Yeah, there's a plan.

Andy out.

IBM Party boys

Okay so the title over-states it a little... Below is a picture of the IBM engine room at Bell Canada, from left to right, Kshema (reporting legend), Srini (proj.manager extraordanaire), Joe (Oracle guru), Ram (Callidus quarterback), Samrat (maintenance miester), me (team mascot) and most importantly (cos he paid :-)) Pierre (deal broker)! Nothing like a team lunch when the partner pays, thanks Pierre, my surf and turf was outstanding. Sadly, for us not him, AJ is still on his honeymoon so he's not there.

New York City - no kids - Part 2

About time I ran through some more of our NYC trip, I'll try to keep it brief. We woke on Saturday morning to apparently clearing skies and set out seeking a New York diner breakfast. Walked over to 8th avenue and found what we were looking for, one dirty big fry-up later and I'm firing on all cylinders, Jo went a slightly more health route, too bad for her I say. So now walking is the go, gotta burn off the 2500 calories I just ate. First the bus though, we bought a 2 day bus tour ticket that let us take any of the 3 different tours of Downtown, Uptown and Brooklyn, you can hop on and off the double decker, open-top buses at any stop, usually another bus is a few minutes away. So this is a great way to get around and costs about $45 each for the two days. So we head off downtown and see the courts (Law and Order filmed there), Greenwich Village, Soho, Chinatown and end up getting off at Ground Zero, site of the ex-World Trade Centre.Frankly I didn't expect any real emotional feedback, I love the Yanks but they do try some peoples patience internationally and enemies will use whatever means at their disposal to counter-attack... it's a pretty brutal world and we westerners are very sheltered from it, we think that civilians are innocent and not valid targets, well our own civilians anyway, ask a Lebanese how he feels. Having said that I was moved by the very temporary and low key memorial, I had expected USA USA USA, not so. The photos taken of firemen dragging people from the rubble just before they went back in again, never to return, tugged the heart-strings pretty hard. Still, the site is now a flurry of building activity as they put in the foundations on the Freedom Tower, I wonder if it's a symbol for the whole planet, or just for the US... Anyway as I said I love the Yanks, they're as lovable and flawed as the next guy, and they have big guns.

We walked to the Hudson River and gazed across the half a klic or so to Jersey, Liberty Island and that famous green statue were just visable through haze. We walked around to Battery Park and the rain hit us pretty hard. By the time we found the bus again we were a little wet but the sky cleared and we stayed on board as it took us down the end of Wall St and around under the Brooklyn Bridge, past the United Nations ('Hey Kofi, give us a wave!'), by one of The Donalds many condo towers and eventually stopping outside the Rockafella Centre where we spotted that Lexington Ave had been blocked off to cars and had several blocks of street market set up. We had a burito for lunch, not bad but not great, Jo bought some cheap jewelry for the girls and walked on to Central Park. We had the obligatory horse and carridge ride around a very small part of the park, frankly it wasn't that good. Then we walked through the park, really only through about a quarter of it, and it's an amazing place. You can always hear the buzz of the city but for most of the time you can't see any buildings, roads, cars... it's a fantastic park, and it's huge! We then hoped back on one of our buses and tripped through the Upper West Side, Jerry Seinfeld territory, then through Harlem and back down to Central Park. Frankly we were a bit pooped by this stage and it was getting late in the day.Dinner was a Hell's Kitchen Thai place that I'd seen in a local resturant guide. The place had seating for maybe 12 people and that food was awesome, some of the best Thai we've ever had, price was right too, really cheap. Fired up after this, and watching the Toronto Blue Jays kicking the New York Yankees butts at baseball on a pub TV, we were primed for our next stop a late night comedy club. Saw a pretty good show, 2 of the 5 comedians were fantastic, one was okay and two were average. Drank two Long Island Iced Teas, what else, and Jo had two Manhattans. Rolled into bed late and slept well. Oh I almost forgot, slept well in our 16th floor suite, I'd complained about the street noise from our 5th floor room and had been upgraded free to a full suite well above the street, truely outstanding.

Thats' enough for now, one more day of NYC to come... tired now, must sleep...

Andy, out.

New Video online

Okay it's good to go. You can check out the new video below courtesy of YouTube, I'll put a higher quality one up tomorrow and link it to the blog. It's footage from January this year through till the girls birthdays. We have heaps of other footage from New York, Montreal and Quebec City but that can keep for a second vid.
Summer looks like it's ending, days are a little cooler and we spent this evening around a fire at Jo's cousins. The kids had their first smores, toasted marshmallows and melted choc-chips between crackers, and the girls are staying for a sleep over. I'd better push off myself, it's after 11pm and I'm stuffed.

Cheers, Andy out.

Back from the Beach

It's nearly 10:30pm and the kids have just hit the hay. Cam needed to be carried from the car as he was out-of-it, into bed easily. The girls had to have a shower to get the sand off. It took over 2.5 hours to drive to Wasaga Beach from home, but only just over 90 minutes to get back, the traffic going was really bad, even for Toronto and trust me traffic sucks here. Coming back I was on 130 most of the way, xlnt. The beach is on the south eastern shore of Georgian Bay, actually a very sizable lake that's considered a bay of Lake Huron. So being a lake the water was fresh but the beach was long and clean with very fine sand. The kids could play pretty much anywhere with the depth still only knee height 100m out. Say 'hi' to Deb, Ron, Andre and Ali below, our friends from Oakville who invited us along.So we had a few beers and glasses of red on the beach and enjoyed an overcast but warm day here in late summer. There's quite a few more photos from today, and a handfew of Cam on his camp bus, up on Flickr.

Living a Bollywood Movie!

We never imagined going to the other side of the world, to Canada to experience a taste of India. Now feeling like quite the connoisseurs of fine Indian food thanks to the likes of "Shiraaz" (even the name teases makes my mouth water), we had no idea of the fun we were to have at the wedding of AJ and Reema.

To try to blend in (like i could) i went shopping with Aruna for a sari. I thought shopping just for a western dress was hard, until i saw all the beautifully coloured and bejewelled sari's. It looked as though someone had been using their bedazzler they got for Xmas, as Aruna pointed out the Indians like their bling and there was heaps of it. After going from one shop to another for over two hours I actually settled for one that i saw in the very first shop (how typical is that). I bought the blouse, skirt,bracelets and necklace to blend in and not match as you couldn't go with perfectly matching colours ;at this comment I looked at the shop keeper and said "I don't think that i'll worry about looking perfect." So the only other thing to do was to learn how to put the set up on.

Here's the part when i actually used Google (amazing huh Andy?) and low and behold I now have the know how of millions other of people! The night before the wedding we were out at a BBQ, where I brought along my get-up and the girls and I played dress ups. Thank goodness for Laura and Andrea who help me get the gist of it so that the next morning at 6am I would be able to get dressed. It really felt lovely, it was colourful and thank goodness the day wasn't the 40 degrees that we'd been having earlier in summer so i felt pretty comfortable too.

So I've written so much and we're not at the wedding part yet, and you may have noticed that I had mentioned 6am. On our invitations the ceremony started at 8am about 45mins from where we were so we thought to get up at 6 with the kids to set off on time (I know how unlike me)but we didn't want to miss anything; and by 7.30 we were gone. Now this may be the time to let you know that Indians run on I.S.T, that is Indian Stretchable Time, a little fact we only became aware of when we rocked up thinking we were a few minutes late but ended up being an hour and a half early. 8am means some time before 10am. Yes nothing like getting the kids early out of bed after a late night and finding out that you didn't have to, anyway I'm still feeling good about my attire but a little obvious and standing out needless to say.

When the guests started arriving and we noticed AJ's onterage we went over to say hello. In traditional style he was to arrive by horse and was dressed in a spectacular outfit complete with a headdress that covered his face. I'm sorry that I cannot name any of these, I only know sari! With all the groomsmen dancing and clapping AJ followed behind by horse and went to an outside ceremony for a meeting of male relatives from the two families. With this part over we were all led into the temple (we all had to cover our heads with scarves) for supper. Thank goodness our kids like to try stuff and they happily went to the tables and ate some great Indian food. Soon a buzz came around that meant we were to enter the temple for the wedding ceremony, so with bellies full we moved on.

In the main room the bride and groom sat infront of an altar holding the Holy Book, as we entered the ladies moved to the left and the men to the right and the girls and i found a place on the floor to sit. Man, it was so hard to keep the end of my sari over my head, not that I was alone... every woman there shared my problem, in the end I just let it slip off and hoped that I looked innocent enough as it covered the back of my head. The ceremony was interesting with a series of prayers and the couple circling the altar four times and then they were officially man and wife. All that was left was to congratulate them and go to the supper room for lunch! Well we just congratulated and took the kids back home, as we had been there for a few hours over everybody else.

Part two, The Party/Reception

Once again for the night time activities I dressed up in my sari, we then dropped off the kids with Gary and Laura who had kindly agreed to have them over night (we are returning the favour guys I promise) and set off to party on. Trying to reduce this a little we were savvy to I.S.T. and arrived hideously late by western standards (actually more my style). AJ and Reema arrived to be seated at the most romantic setting I've ever seen, they were on a elevated floor and the speeches started straight away. All the typical greetings to families who had travelled (one sister who came all the way from a little place called Wantirna, Victoria, Australia!)There were approx 650 guests so there was a bit to get through. We had a slide show from the groomsmen and then the bridesmaids set the couple on the side of the dance floor and the 6 of them danced for the couple in true Bollywood style it was awesome and quite touching to watch. Pretty much from then on the party had started and people got up to dance.

I have never seen so many men actually dance really well as I did that night and I used to go clubbing a long time ago. It was wild fun and after getting over feeling like a fake I too felt pretty Indian and bopped around. The night was filled by routines of speciality dancers who danced as money was thrown at them, ladies danced with a flame on their heads, it was just so loud, bright and colourful and the music was quite hypnotic pretty much the same beat with a guy on a drum making the music seem alive. People were able to go and eat dinner from a buffet table whenever they wanted, so once the dancing started nothing else interrupted it, it was fantastic.

Sure enough the evening came to a close and we had to leave but we felt so honoured to have been invited. Even though we were among 650 guests we felt special as we would not have been offended if we had not of been invited as seems the case in big weddings; and knew the invite was because the couple wanted us there. Mind you Andy and I are tempted to become Indian wedding crashers saying that we are some distant cousin of the Maharajah, they are that much fun.

In Post Production

We've taken a lot of video since we've been here. Our poor camera, now four+ years old, has taken a beating and doesn't record in widescreen mode anymore. Getting it repaired is likely to be expensive, and I have my eye on a cute Hi-Def model :-). But that puppy is more than a few bucks so I'm gunna have to wait, hmmmm maybe a Christmas present to self... In the meantime we've been collecting footage and so far only published clips for the end of 2005 and our Disneyworld trip (see the links for these clips on the right). Jo and I got busy last night and burnt the midnight oil cutting together video from last winter, spring and summer, including the kids skating show, our trip to Ottawa, the girls birthday parties and other highlights. We should have it ready in the next day or so and hopefully I can upload it to YouTube. We've got about 1 minute left to edit and we're really happy with the result so far, so check back here in a day or so to see the final clip. Cheers.

Here's the Disney clip loaded on YouTube, if you haven't seen YouTube yet you should check it out...

When I said 'kicked out' I meant...

Darnit, I was trying to be funny and just ended up being stupid. We didn't get kicked out of our house, I was referring to the fact that we've moved websites, namely moved to this one. Sorry for the confusion! And thanks for the emails of concern. Next time I 'll say what I mean and not be a smartarse (well I'll try anyway).

Here's a shot of Jo and our friends all dressed up for AJ and Reema's wedding, doesn't she look smashing in her sari?

Get it while it's hot

Okay, so we're launching this thing ok? There's gotta be a heap of posts and heap of other stuff available when you go online, or your interest will drop off. Over three hundred new photos, frankly we wrote enough stuff to keep you amused for at least 2 minutes. Eat it up ppl, it aint gettin' betta than this.
Check out the previous posts on the right of the page over there, you have enough reading to get you through til tea time!

Camping Cam

After missing one day of camp due to our trip to Quebec City, Cam set off today in an excited mood. We met the bus at his school at 8.05am, he boarded and didn't even wave out the window as he left. It seemed a long day without him around; the girls actually played really nicely and didn't fight at all! So when 5pm came around again the girla and I met the bus and brought home our little tired trooper, who needed to recharge his batteries with a dose of Battlefield. I haven't tried to pump too much info from him, just enough to know he will be happy to go back tomorrow. So I guess that tomorrow I'll be up early again to make a "Happy Camper Lunch".

New York City - no kids - Part 1

Okay, so this is out of sync, our NYC trip happened in late July... better late that never, here goes...

Maybe most friendships start with a chance encounter... How we met Joyce and Dan was certainly a fluke. We had only been in Toronto for a few weeks, already moved from one dodgy apartment to the next and Jo had found our house in Oakville. We had two nights to kill after moving out of the 2nd apartment before we could get posession of 374 River Glen. So we ended up in the Mariot Residence Inn just around the corner from the Bell Canada offices. The hotel was nice, we had a seperate room for the kids and a kitchenette, but best of all a full buffet breakfast was included for us all. I wandered downstairs for breakfast before heading off to the office, the rest of the family still tucked into beed I think, and noticed a mum (aka Joyce) dealing with her 4 kids over breakfast. I made some comment like 'wow your kids are well organised/behaved, mine would be all over the place [grin]' and that was it. After I left for work Jo ended up meeting up with Joyce again at the hotel pool and they hit it off. Joyce and Dan had already lived in Melbourne for a while several years ago so there was a lot in common and plenty to chat about. I got home after work and Dan lobbed in from his business in town to find that the girls had locked us into a pizza dinner and beer/wine. Safe to say we all got along really well and chatted to the wee hours of the morning. Since we met last October we've been to visit them in Wattsburg, a small town in a farming district near Erie, Pensylvannia and they've come and spent a weekend with us. On that last visit they offered to have our kids for a long weekend should Jo and I want to get away for some time on our own... and so the seeds of a New York city trip were born.It's important to have a plan, well I like to know basically what I'm doing, although I'm not obsessive about it either. So taking a few days of leave from work we set off on a Thursday morning and headed down passed Niagara, over the border into the US and down the I-90 to Wattsburg. The night before I had been on an IBM/Bell team outting and was a little worse for wear, mostly just tired, which was made worse by the 3.5hr drive. Dan had unfortunately been called OS at the last minute and was visiting England, India and China on a whirlwind 10 day trip, but Joyce was firmly holding to having our kids anyway and going solo. I fear that we weren't much company that evening, I was almost falling asleep over dinner. Next morning we left Joyce with 7 kids and headed back up Lake Erie to Buffalo in New York state and caught our flight to NYC. Well after a 90 minute delay anyway, bad weather in NYC had kept our plane from departing JFK airport so we were already behind schedule. Bad weather? WTF? Now why didn't I check the weather? It's been stinking hot for weeks, a bit of rain but mostly overnight, how could there be bad weather? Well dagnabit a tropical storm was marching up the east coast of the US and was currently hitting NYC pretty hard. Oh well, we were locked and loaded so there was nothing for it and we boarded our flight around 12:30. The JetBlue plane was kitted out nicely, leather seats and personal sattelite TV in the back of each seat. Pretty good given that this was the cheapest flight we could get, US$69 each way.

Luckily we weren't further delayed in the air and made it into JFK airport, about 40k's from Manhattan before 14:00. It was cloudy but the air was humid and warm and if it had rained earlier it had all evaporated by the time we caught our pre-booked shuttle bus to our Times Square hotel. The shuttle ride took about 2 hours, we were first on and last off with stops at the beginning at several different airport terminals (JFK has 9!) and then dropping others at about 5 different hotels and locations around Manhattan. Anyway, it started to rain on our trip downtown and despite there being some sites to see Jo and I had stupidly placed ourselves at a window with view blocked by advertising (yeah, we were tired). We caught some glimpses of the Chrysler Building, Empire State and some suspension bridges under a very grey sky on our way in.The hotel, called The Muse, was located on 46th street just back from 7th Ave and Broadway (the intersection of which is Times Square). A nice little arty hotel very close to the action with a price that wasn't going to break the bank, TripAdvisor.com had some great reviews of it, gotta love net-research. I think it rained the hardest it rained all weekend at exactly the point that Jo and I had to dash from the shuttle and into the lobby :-). The room was a little small and on the 5th floor right on the street (noisy), but Jo and I were glad to be in Manhattan and we watched the rain fall outside our window, looking through the gloom at a stone church and apartment block (complete with those classic NYC fire-escapes) across the street. It was a little later that we had planned on arriving, the flight delay and unexpected 2 hour shuttle ride found us looking for somewhere to eat dinner rather than time to walk and explorer on our first day. Time to start making it up as we went along, while still keeping a list of stuff we really wanted to make sure we did in the back of our minds. We took the hotel supplied umbrella and walked through Times Square. More than a decade ago apparently TS was a dive, lots of strip clubs and dodgy shop fronts, now after the well publicised clean up by the previous major Rudy Giuliani, the square was a clean space, packed with tourists and massive video and light displays. The Square is not a square at all, more like two slim triangles pointing at each other, hourglass shaped really. In NYC the Avenues go North-South and the Streets go East-West, Broadway is the weird one, I guess cos it's the oldest street and pre-dates NYC being turned into a grid, it sort of angles from the upper west side down the the lower east side and so creates lots of wedge shaped blocks as it crosses the grid of avenues and streets. Broadway actually goes from southern Manhattan all the way to the capital of New York State, the city of Albany about 300k's to the north, so it's a long street.

Thinking about two important things close to our hearts, shopping and food, we hoped on the subway down to Canal street and walked through Chinatown browsing fake Rolex watches and Asian groceries. We had heard that this was the place to buy 'knock-off' handbags, like Prada etc, and we had heaps of local chinese approaching us like drug dealers whispering 'want bag? Prada, Louis Verton? good price.' We were approached by a fairly harmless chinese woman and decided to say 'yes' so we could check this out. She told us to follow her and we walked down the street and into an alley where we looked at each other and both had the same thought 'where is she taking us and are we gunna get mugged?'. Into a car park now and after being unlocked with her car remote into a Tarago style van with heavily tinted windows. Inside the van the front seat was curtained off with black cloth and the woman spoke something unintelligible into a cellphone quickly. The she locks the doors behind us with the remote... Okay, so know we're a little more than worried... Headline - 'Moronic Aussies in NYC 15 minutes before being mugged by old chinese woman'. Luckily the entire inside of the van is covered with fake gear and she starts pointing out their virtues of the various handbags, purses, sunglasses and watches... we breathe a sigh of relief, might have been a real short trip. Nothing took Jo's eye, all really garish stuff, and we beat a hasty retreat outa there. Glad to be back on the street with our lives and our wallets we started to look for something to eat. We wandered the streets for a while but nothing really looked great so we headed a little further north and found a place in Little Italy. It was drizzling occasionally but the umbrella we were carrying was mostly un-needed and we chose a place on the street but under an awning. The food was not great, we had a fairly tough calimari, then I had veal (ok) and jo had a salad (not so good). Frankly this place wouldn't last on Lygon St, but we probably just chose badly, whatchygunnado? As they say in NYC - Forgetaboutit.Needing to walk off dinner we made our way back a few blocks west to Broadway and walked all the way back up to Times Sq, about 4-5 k's, Manhattan is a big island. Along the way we stopped in at a few shops, shoes mostly, passed the FlatIron building, saw a few leafy squares, glimpsed the Empire State nicely lit up and, despite the street not being very well lit, felt safe and secure after dark.

Roadtrip to Quebec - Part 1

I'm back at work, just finished dropping off one rental car and getting another. The reason for the swap was our roadtrip to the province of Quebec. I've had to travel to Montreal a few times recently to support our clients as they have offices in both Ontario (where we live) and Quebec the two most populous provinces in Canada.The other times I've flown up, it's like a Melbourne-Sydney trip, not too long, but this time we thought that the whole family would drive up. This would also let us extend the stay over a long weekend and so we could take in Quebec City as well since we'd be within 3 hours drive from Montreal. Not wanting to cramp the kids too much I swapped the Impala for a Tarago-style Chevy Uplander, rigged up a DVD player for the kids and we hit the road Monday a week ago. The drive from Toronto to Montreal is a pretty dull 5.5 hrs, it's amazing just how flat Ontario is, puts Holland to shame. I spent the week working, but was able to get away around 5pm every day so we could get out and see the sights as a family too. Montreal is a nice city, a little smaller than Melbourne and we got a great view from Mont Royal which over looks the CBD.

The main square in the old part of Montreal is called Place de Jacques-Cartier, named for one of the founders of the town, and it's packed with resturants and cafes. It was a nice place to eat dinner as the street performers did their shows in the sloping square. One night I was pulled into a performance and had to do heaps of embarassing stuff in front of the crowd with 4 other guys. Sadly we didn't have the video or still camera that night, so you're spared any actual proof :-), safe to say that the kids laughed their butts off.

I had the best ribs I've ever eaten in my life at Baton Rouge in Montreal. I couldn't even pick them up, they just fell to bits in my hands, totally awesome. We had to go back for a second night as the girls had missed out on the ribs and wouldn't let us get away without taking them back for their own plate full. We need to try to cook them at home, apparently you boil the ribs for about an hour to soften them up and only use the BBQ to put some charcoal on them and turn the sauce a nice toffee-like colour. I'll let you know how we go... ribs rock.Anyway I left work early on Friday and we packed the car for the 3 hour trip up Highway 40 to Quebec City. I'll tell you about our weekend in my next post, we had a ball.

We've moved to a BLOG

I should have done this in the beginning but using a blog (weblog) seemed a little limiting and I wanted complete control over the site. But in the end maintaining the site is too much work. So I'll start putting our news here in the hope that we'll be a little more regular simply because it'll be easier to post, and who knows maybe Jo will start posting too, she's really using the internet a these days. For now at least we'll just start anew, I don't plan to migrate the old stuff from our old site, so the old stuff will stay there. And of course I can't host video here so I'll just link from here to our server when I need to, you shouldn't notice any difference anyway.