Lost in Atlantis

Hey all, I just never seem to have any time these days. I'm sure I actually have lots to spare but with my head in 3 time zones it doesn't seem to work out that way. I guess I also need more downtime to get my head back on straight. In the middle of everything that goes on in my simple life it was pretty awesome to take a couple of weeks off work and enjoy two vacations back-to-back where the objective was to relax rather than see and do everything. The first week was at the Lake Cecebee cottage that we've been to the last 2 years.The Emersons's joined us again for a few days and we had our usual fun time with their crew. The kids spent lots of time on the lake and we all did lots of swimming but I think the kids enjoyed the volleyball matches the most. I had also bought an Xbox360 Arcade game called Trials and another called Shadow Complex, both are lots of fun, and Cam and I spent a lot of time working together on those two, finishing Shadow Complex after 9 hours of play (over several days ;-)).The weather started to drop off by the end of the week and Friday we had quite a lot of rain. The plan was to stay until Saturday and then fly out to the Bahamas early Sunday morning, but with the weather fading we decided to pull stumps on Friday and give ourselves a full day at home before we had to fly.

On the three hour drive back home Cam and I stopped for burgers at the 'famous' Webbers outside Gravenhurst. The girls had eaten there before and felt like something lighter so that just left us boys enjoying the burger juices running down our arms. 'Mmmm, that's a tasty burger!'.

9am flight on Sunday isn't too bad, up at 6am and the kids are used to the drill, Jo's always totally organised and we had no dramas. The flight was a little late but we managed to all get seated together despite our AmEx supplied seats being scattered all over the plane once again. It's only a 3 hour flight down to Nassau and the weather as we walked through the small terminal was awesome. A local in pirate costume welcomed us all and a calypso band was playing live in the immigration hall so at least we had something to listen to after I insisted we switch lanes 'to the faster one' and then the lane froze for 20 minutes (aint that always the way?).The Atlantis resort on Paradise Island sounds pretty cool and it is. The island itself is only separated from the 'mainland' island by two bridges, like Phillip Island back home, but it still has some fantastic beaches. The entire western end of the island is the resort, five huge hotel towers, a full Disney-style water park and the largest open air aquarium in the world. Our suite was in the timeshare part of the resort as it's MUCH cheaper to rent from a timeshare owner who doesn't want his week than it is to book through the resort, we probably saved 50%, well worth it. The Harbourside is across the marina from the main Royal Towers and we had a 100sqm room with kitchen, dinning and seperate BR for us, lots of room and a great view too.

We had read heaps about the place online and were planning on not eating out too much, especially at the resort restuarants where meals can run USD$500 for a family of 4. So we asked our cab driver to stop at a supermarket on the way from the airport and it worked out really well. We could have breakfast in the room every day, eat lunch by the pools mostly as the food there was good value and then either eat in at night or hit a few local places. One night we went to a local resturant area called the 'fish fry' where lots of local resturants are set up near the fishing wharves. we ate the local delicacy, conch fritters (the creatures that make those huge conch shells), and then filled up on prawns, lobster, steak and awesome grouper fillets (best fish I have ever eaten.... ever).The resort itself has heaps to do with the 8 or so water slides, a 1.5km long 'lazy river' that has 4 foot waves pushed through it and sections of rapids that you ride in 'inner-tubes', all the marine life and then the two beaches. We went down to the main beach on the second day I think and saw a guy feeding the fish with bread. The water goes from 0 to 3 feet deep in about 2 meters so pretty much as soon as you step into the warm blue water there are fish within a yard of you. If you have food for them then it's a bit crazy, I hope the video does it justice, the fish swarm all around and freaked the kids out a little although they soon got used to it. We bought the kids masks and snorkels (as the resort nickles and dimes you for everything, despite the high cost of entry) and they had a great time, really taking to it. On another day Cam and I were just floating around, I think we'd just seen two squid, and I dove down a couple of meters to pick up a shell I'd seen. The shell was 'attached' to a piece of coral and as I tried to pull them apart I felt resistance. The creature was a tiny octopus and I stopped trying to pull it apart so that Cam could see. Unfortunately I don't think I gave him a clear picture of what I was talking about (snorkles in mouths, heads underwater etc) and he just pulled the two objects apart. At this point the octopus gave up the fight and let go of both the shell and the coral, squirted ink 2-3 times in Cam's face and sped down to the bottom... where a fish quickly ate him... oops. At another beach there were some reefs, not colourful but plenty of fish hanging around and we all got to see dozens of species including fairly large ones (twice as big as a footy maybe).The kids all took to the water slides but none as much as Cam. We let him go off on his own after a couple of days as his enthusiasm was much higher than ours. He went on the highest-fastest slide far more times than the rest of us combined. There's a famous slide that drops almost vertical and then finishes by taking you into a glass pipe right through the shark tank. Sadly you can't see a thing as there's way to much water spraying everywhere but we all had fun. My body was pretty beaten up at the end of the week, I just can't bounce back like the kids can after taking abuse from those slides.

We had thought about doing one of the dolphin encounters or hitting an out-lying reef but the costs were very high and we have that sort of thing back in Australia so we decided to pass. This meant more time on the slides, at the beach and by the pool drinking frosty daiquiris, Jo's favourite - the Dirty Banana :-). After a week in the Bahamas we can see why people like it down there, it really is pretty awesome. We now can't wait to get back home to the GBR for some real snorkling.And now we're all back doing what we have to, the kids started school last week and I flew back to Madrid 24 hours after returning from Nassau [sob]. Still no word on what's happening long term, the current assignment provisions left a little to be desired so that needs to be discussed further. I'm hoping that we'll get time to come back home either over Christmas, like last year, or maybe a little later, maybe March, we'll see. Cheers all, nice to hear from those of you who recently pinged!

Andy, out.

Jasmines BDay Vid

Also lots of new photos up on Flickr from our Bahama vacation. I'll write a blog entry about that in a day or so, back off to Madrid tonight so I'm enjoying my last day in TO.

Andy, out.

Update : And Google, once again, has muted the sound due to copyright... seriously I get like 20 views on my videos and I own the music, the music publishing industry can screw itself, may it die a slow, horrid death. In the meantime I'll find a new way to share these videos with friends and family.

Jasmines Party

Tonight is Jasmines birthday party and the weather is playing nicely for a change. This is a very good thing because the theme is Drive-In Movie with a complete set up in the back yard and a vampire flick screening after sundown. Jazz has 12 girls coming and Jo has also invited 6 boys who are turning up while the girls are on a geo-tagging scavenger hunt (SMS clues, GPS co-ords to follow, pictures to take). Hopefully it goes off well, wish us (and the entire neighbourhood) luck! Here's the invitation -Andy, out.

Rendevous in Paris

I'm in some trouble apparently. My buddies feel that I've set the bar for wives surprise birthdays a little too high. Ok, fair enough. But put it in context boys, I've bought Jo flowers maybe 3 times in the last 22 years, we don't usually do anything for birthdays, anniversaries or even Christmas (actually she usually gets me something and I just suck). So the scales were waaaay out of balance. Anyway guys, suck it up.

So about 3 weeks ago I was trying to work out what I was going to do for Jo's 40th. We had chatted and thought that a party in the backyard would be good, maybe we would get it catered. Of course me being in Madrid for 3 out of every 4 weeks makes life interesting, but we figured that maybe we would push the date out a little and hold something at home in early July when I was due back in Oakville. I was speaking with Jay and AJ one evening in Madrid and they suggested something a little grander. Fly her to Paris, meet her there and have a quick and dirty weekend without the kids. Sold.

I told Jasmine as I needed to work out where the kids were going to go and she didn't let me down, keeping the secret perfectly. Our great friends and neighbours, the Emersons, Davis's and Shafers took on the task of looking after the 3 kids and I booked the flights and an apartment. Jo was soooo busy with the school end-of-year fund-raiser, and tennis of course, that I had to tell her 36 hours before she was due to fly as I had to rely on her to pack for the kids as well as herself. She left TO on Thursday night and I left Madrid the next morning around 8am. Our flights arrived at exactly the same time and I had to hump to her terminal to meet her(aint it always the way, the two terminals were as far apart as they could be). As it was it worked out perfectly and we met each other right as Jo emerged from Customs.

The traffic from Charles De Gaulle to downtown was jammed and it took an hour to get to the apartment. But we set out on a great walk, taking us from our place in Montmartre (the highest point in Paris and home to the Basilique Sacre Coeur) down to close to the Sienne and Aux Lyonnais for lunch. The fixed menu, as recommended by Jay, was outstanding and we ordered one of each of the choices. I ate a huge slab of blood pudding with caramelised apples.Jo's had a fluffy cheese-like souffle, the surroundings were classy and the staff were highly amused at my poor attempts to speak French. But as we quickly found out everyone we spoke to had a good grasp of english anyway. The wine cost a bomb and was worth it! We didn't finish it over lunch and you'll see the remaining third of the bottle turning up in a few photos as we carried it around Paris :-), like here - After lunch we staggered down the tight lanes to the Sienne and Notre Dame. At this point Jo had been going for about 26hrs with 2hrs sleep so we caught a cab back to the apartment and she napped while I went out for supplies. We ate dinner on the street even though it was getting a little cold after the sun went down. Good food again of course, cheaper wine thank god, and a waiter whose attitude seemed to get worse as the night went on. I swear I have no idea what I did to piss him off, but he started out nice and ended up a prick. It's times like this that I like the North American tipping system... with no tipping I had no way to effectively retaliate other than being rude while he was around which was fun but not as much fun as hitting his back pocket [sigh].The next day started out nice and turned into showers, but it didn't stop us hitting the Metro and discovering the pastry and chocolate nirvana's that Jay had directed us to, Pierre Hermes and Gerard Mulot. Shops of cakes and candies that look more like jewelery stores. We also hit the Musee d'Orsay for some culture and eventually found our way to the Eiffel Tower which is more impressive than I thought it would be from close up. We didn't go up as the weather was still overcast and cold. After spending 2 hours shopping for gifts for the kids we had a quiet evening in our apartment, kept company by champagne and eat-in food.As we got to the airport the next day I had a brain-fart by thinking that I'd left Jo's passport in the apartment, surely meaning she'd miss her flight, but it turned up in her luggage. I just like to freak us both out on occassion, aint I bunches of fun? We had a fun weekend, just enough taste of Paris to know we want to come back with the kids, and hopefully we will in late summer. If you go there you should do yourself a favour and try the macaroons at Pierre Hermes, they taste as good as they cost.

Andy, out.

Bullshit

20 minutes of taunting an animal that looks both scared and bewildered, ends with the heavily bleeding bull having it's spine severed, falling to the ground still alive, but paralyzed, and then finally put out of it's misery, dragged out of the arena to the sounds of a crowd cheering the coward who pranced around directing the action. I'm no PETA activist, people before animals all the way, last I checked they are still both tasty and delicious... but bullfighting is bullshit. I want to see something approaching a fair contest... would you pay to see me fight Mike Tyson and then cheer Mike when he finally stopped toying with me and punched my lights out? [Okay, bad analogy, don't answer that].

Andy, out.

The Rain in Spain

After a winter flying to and from Winnipeg, and the thrill of -30 degree and lower days in Canada's freezer, it was great to come to Spain and get a fast-forward to spring. We've had our first touch of the heat to come with a 33 degree day last Friday and with Shyam in town for his 35th birthday (flight a present from his missus Monika) we spent the early evening on the roof of our new apartment building and enjoyed the pool and some cervezas.

The weekend before I had time to myself as Jay and Claudia left for Toronto on the Friday and AJ wasn't due back in Madrid until Tuesday. I went on a nice long walk on the Saturday, down to the small river and then back up through the parks and gardens that are near the university.Jay mentioned that one city he and Claudia hadn't managed to get to on their 4 day driving tour was Segovia, just to the north of Madrid, and since it was only a 30 minute train ride I figured it'd be a good day trip and get me the heck outa of the apartment. It was a challenge to find the train timetable on the web and then to understand it, but I worked it out and took the metro to one of the main Madrid stations Charmartin where all three rail networks meet (the Metro, regional and the Renfe very fast trains). I asked, in Spanish, for a return trip but the guy told me I could only buy solo which left me without a return locked in. Anyways it was only 10 euros and I took my ticket, which looks exactly like an airline boarding pass, up to the platform and boarded the train for Segovia.
I just plonked myself down at a 4 seater table and noticed that the handful of other passengers didn't take the other more roomy tables in the carriage. It dawned on me that the ticket was for a specific seat but since the train wasn't anywhere near full I stayed where I was. The train left right on time and sped up to over 210kph. It wasn't one of the reaaally fast AVE trains, they go over 300kph, but it was a fun ride and we blasted through the dry countryside and two very long tunnels (one over 28km's long under a mountain range) arriving in Segovia 5 minutes early, the whole trip took just over 20 minutes. The Renfe station is seperate from the main Segovia station where the slower regional trains take over 2 hours to make their way from Madrid, and it's located a long way from the town itself so I took the bus to the downtown area for 80 cents. The bus left me on a small street but the driver pointed in the direction I should walk and I followed a few other obvious tourists down a wide alley. I turned a corner and the symbol of Segovia, a huge Roman aqueduct built around the end of the 1st century AD, loomed over the surrounding buildings, cool.The old town is surrounded by a wall and it was easy walking once I was inside the city itself up on the rock plateau. Apart from the aqueduct the other main historic attractions are the cathedral and the Alcazar (pronouced Al-Cath-a) a medieval fortress/palace that sits on the far cliff and juts out into the valley. I took the self guided tour through the Alcazar and humped up the narrow spiral staircases 152 steps to the main tower.On the way up I was praying that the unfit tourists ahead of me wouldn't die and roll Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark style back down to kill me, seriously it was a close call for some of them. I had planned to take the 6pm train back to Madrid but when I got to the station I found it was booked out damnit. I should have booked my trip back as soon as I arrived... oh well, a 2 hour wait for the next train (which I got the last ticket for) was made a little easier by my iTouch and a glass of red while I watched the occasional VFT head through the station.Oops, I should finish the title of this post... the rain in Spain falls mainly in Madrid :-)... but usually not for long. Our 33 degree Friday turned into a thunderstorm on Friday night, just as were were about to hit a patio night club on the roof of a building. I guess they didn't want the guests to be zorched and closed the roof [sigh]. Anyways looks like the weather is improving today and we've had some more rain but it didn't stop us taking in a Real Madrid soccer game last night (fun atmosphere, Madrid lost to Mallorca) and we have a bull fight planned for tonight. Should be interesting, expect some pics of that in a day or so.

Andy, out.

New Star Trek Trailer

Hasta Lunes

A better work week is done and I'm sitting on the balcony overlooking our street, Calle de Lagasca -drinking a vodka-redBull -looking into the back yard of the Italian Consular General to Spain's residence -AJ just made a great cheese and fruit platter, Jay has veal sausages and wild rice on the make, life is better than decent.

Andy, out.

Hit-and-run culture

Finally took our cameras on a walk, so new photos are on Flickr. It was a long walk too but we broke up the return journey with a few stops for a quick beer at some outdoor places on the way. Jay had already scoped out the modern art museo, the Reina Sofia, so we targeted the big Picasso's and Dali's for some hit-and-run culture. The large park that's 15 minutes walk from our apartment is great and after being asked if we wanted to buy any hashish we mingled with the crowds, runners and roller bladers.The weather has been great this week and it looks like blue skies today too. It makes our office pretty hard to bear in the afternoon though as they don't appear to arc up the air-con as the building heats up and we're all suffering to varying degrees in the dead/stale air. But lunch is when we get out and go for a walk and yesterday found a great little donor kebab place where we had a really tasty meal so the food options are opening up finally.We have requirements discussions all day today, hopefully we'll be able to contribute. Although most meetings are started in English, and it sounds like the main points are discussed in English, there are often long sections of discussion in Spanish that we're always unsure what's being said. The long sections are usually summarised for us in English, but the summary is always very short leaving me worried that we're missing something. But in the end it'll all be written down by our Spanish BA's and translated for us so we're hoping it's going to work out.

Anyways, I better finish breakfast and have a shave so we can get out of here.

Andy, out.

A Long Haul

The working hours here are a little tough on us. Starting at 09:30 is fine, but waiting until 14:00 for lunch and then coming back and staying in the office every day until 19:00 is a new experience for us. Especially for the last week which really has not contained much work for us as we wait for the deal to get signed. Today, Friday, is a little better as we get out of here at 15:00, but it also means no lunch hour at all... it's touch and go whether we make it to quitting time or die of hunger.

Food has been mixed and options other than Spanish fare are limited. I've not seen a single Chinese or Indian resturant and even the 'Irish Pub' didn't have anything resembling Anglo food. Not that we're complaining, the local tapas bars are awesome and we've had great Spanish food mostly. It's really just a few places around the office that have disappointed, average cafeteria food served in restaurants. But of course that can happen anywhere and it's not like we paid more than 15Euro (about $27AUD) each including a pint of beer for 2 courses. On the plus side AJ found a bottle of red wine for 1Euro and it was actually pretty good, so not everything here is expensive and not everything cheap is nasty.

AJ has a buddy in town for a few nights so we plan to go out tonight with Riyaz and continue the good work he and AJ started last night (they got back in around 3am, Jay and I aren't young enough to do that crap anymore). With tomorrow planned for recovery and probably some more exploration we will get out of Madrid on Sunday and go here to see a 15th century castle that featured in the 50's movie El Cid, sweet.

Andy, out.

Bien gracias, y tu?

Seriously have to learn some more Spanish. Lots of people speak English quite well but we've had a couple of cab drivers who didn't, making us work hard with our hands to make sure we went in the right direction, hilarious. The flights weren't too bad, I caught about 3+ hours sleep between Toronto and Frankfurt and after a quick break there the 2.5hr flight to Madrid was pretty easy. AJ didn't get any sleep so he had to keep his eyes closed to avoid bleeding to death. We went straight to the apartment, in a very Toorak-style inner-city neighbourhood called Salamanca. The whole area is flooded with high price fashion stores, D&G, Prada, Miu Miu etc and other top-shelf stores (Jay bought one apple and a handful of blackberries from a grocer and the cost was 6EU, or $12AUD). We arrived at the apartment to find it was still being cleaned so after a quick look around we decided to go for a walk.

Jay had been to Madrid a few weeks ago as part of setting the gig up so he had a good basic mental compass for what was where. The sun was out and temp around 20 degrees so we headed towards the main city center about 4k's away. Every so often we stopped to check out food, a plate of cured ham, awesome sheeps-milk cheese and beers for all 3 of us cost 10EU, outstanding value and damn tasty. I was in Madrid in '86 but my memories were of hot mid-summer weather, back-packers hostels and a different area of the city. The streets, especially Grand Via the main drag, were very familiar but early spring gives all the trees and parks a much greener look to the one I saw with 19 year old eyes and now recall with a 41 year old brain.

First images of Madrid are the obvious ones, tight winding streets with smaller cars (easier to touch-park) and 100's of vespas, lots of people on the streets after 8pm on a Monday, old couples walking hand in hand wearing their best clothes (just strolling), fantastic architecture, statues, sculptures, gardens. Our walk was over 7k's round trip and after being cramped in the aircraft my knees started to complain (clearly getting old :-)) so I was relieved to get back to the apartment around 21:30, have a red wine and wind down.

We all hit the hay before midnight not sure what time our body clocks would wake us. In the end I hit my snooze 3-4 times before I could get moving, my body still thinking it was 2am. We were running a little late so I couldn't stop for a coffee and that made this morning a bit harsh. We attended our first client meeting which was held mostly in spanish, a sure fire way to make me nod off and I had to focus to stay awake. We had lunch at a local place were the IBM'ers are given vouchers that cost 1EU and are good for a 3 course meal. The three of us did have any vouchers but the bill was under 10EU each although the food was pretty basic, okay 'rustic' to be polite. Hopefully it wont be our regular lunchtime haunt. The plan for this evening is to take the Metro back to the apartment, rather than a cab, then shop for some essentials before we head out for tapas again. I didn't take my camera with me last night so I don't have any pictures yet but expect that to be remedied tonight.

Andy, out.

Como estats!

So we have Easter lunch tee'd up with our relatives the Strutts on Sunday and then in the evening I fly out to Madrid via Frankfurt for three weeks. We have a really nice apartment booked for the three of us, Jay, AJ and myself, in the Salamanca district, walking distance to the metro and in very nice street. We plan to shuffle our trips back to TO so that 2 of us are always on site. I need to get back into my online Spanish course so I have a hope of ordering edible food and finding my way around :-). The project is for the next 12 months, hopefully the family will join me for summer in Madrid and we'll get to England and Paris too with some luck, but as usual we'll play it all by ear and fly by the seat of our pants, it's how we roll!

Andy, out.

Tremblant Vid

I have uploaded this in HD, if you want to view it go here and click [View in HD]. [edit] they've disabled the audio due to copyright, nice.

Winter Wonderland

Last year the whole family took up skiing and tagged along with our friends the Emersons on their annual ski trip. This year the destination was the same as last year, Mt Tremblant in Quebec, about 100kms north of Montreal. Same deal this year with the exchange rate making a shift to Vermont or the Rockies an expensive prop, so Wednesday at 5:20am we backed out of the driveway and headed up the 401 to Tremblant. This particular day we were expecting a huge snow storm and the weather didn't disappoint at all keeping us to between 80-90kph instead of the usual 120 due to low visibility and slippery roads. Our Murano broke down about 30ks east of Cornwall and we had to be towed back to the local Nissan dealer for some help. The cause was a snow clogged air filter, a known design problem with our model apparently, thanks a bunch Japan. The delay cost us a couple of hours or more but the Emersons weren't fairing much better being stuck behind a big accident about an hour up the road. By the time we caught a feed and got back on the road the accident had cleared but the Emersons were not far ahead of us. The timing of everything worked against us though putting us clear in the middle of Montreal peak hour traffic and the snow just kept coming. We arrived at Tremblants village within minutes of the Emersons after a 14hr drive that should have taken about 7.But the thing about snow is that while is sucks to drive in it you need it for skiing. So an additional 7 hours of driving converts nicely into 3 days of awesome skiing conditions, so it's all good. The kids all had a full day lesson and Jo and I locked in an afternoon session. While Jo and I skied in the morning we hit a few Green runs to get back into the groove and then headed for the summit again. Up there we found Abbie tagging a crying Cam and their instructor no where to be seen. Gathering up our crew we headed off down the run where Abbie had last seen their group. We caught up with them and the guy was pretty apologetic when he realised a) he'd left some kids behind and b) it was their parents who had discovered the mistake and corrected it (some luck on a mountain that size, dunno what he would have done if we hadn't happened upon them). Cam was basically freezing so we headed off down the hill the fastest way, a big Blue run that had Jo a little worried but she handled it. Finally we got the kids down, the last part with Cam under his instructors arm (it's a very steep section) and we got the kids into their lunch room where they warmed up with 3-4 bowls of soup each. Jo went back to the room for Cam's balaclava and I got the kids all chem-heat-packs for their gloves and boots. Problem solved and we could head out to our own lessons.Jo really enjoyed her lesson, she wasn't expecting to, and came out of it with better skills and more confidence. My lesson wasn't as good as I joined a group that had been together all week and their instructor kept pretty tight with them and I didn't get much attention, some of the group were pretty average skill-wise. My skills aren't great but I can get down a Black diamond, even if I don't look pretty doing it. Having said that I did pick up some good tips and my skiing improved for sure.

The next few days had us all improving and hitting Greens and Blues as a family and occasionally with our group, Misho, Predrag and their kids who are better skiers and boarders than us, often hitting the double Blacks. One double black is called Vertigo and it's like looking down a white elevator shaft, I decided not to take that one... I would have bounced maybe twice on my way down the 80-100 metre drop. We all had a lot of fun and the kids found the long Greens to be a lot of fun due to the sides of the trails offering little diversions around the snow making equipment and sometimes through the trees. They would all take these small trails and try to catch some air off small jumps, Abbie and Cam were getting really good at this and totally fearless. Once both of them wiped out in the trees, no harm done but it was a good thing Jo missed seeing that one. Every night had us in someone elses room, pouring Caesars, Appleton rum, sweet reds and chilled beer. We took all our nightly meals and feasted on Shepards Pie, Osso Buco and quiche while everyone shared their meals with everyone else, a great atmosphere. My legs were pretty down after 3 days skiing and it was a tired family that packed the car and started back to Oakville on Sunday morning. Misho had suggested a different route home and so we let the GPS do the talking and set off back via Montebello and Ottawa. The drive required us to take a ferry and I didn't have any cash, luckily we had just enough in shrappnel in the car to pay the $8, some of it in US coins :-), as they didn't take any plastic.

We're already looking forward to our next skiing trip, hopefully sometime this month we might head off to NY state and ski with our neighbours the Davis's. Can't wait!

Andy, out.

PS: A video is coming, having problems uploading to YouTube atm, bear with me.

Home and Hosed

Seriously, I need a vacation. How can I say that after two weeks in Australia? Too easily I'm afraid. Don't get me wrong, we had a great time, for which we have heaps of people to thank, but don't get the idea that we relaxed much. Throughout the trip we had Cam almost floored with allergies and a broken wrist, Jazz got toncilitis, Abbie a bad tummy bug and Jo a cold. I survived in good health until we arrived back here in Canada and now I have a cold myself [sigh].

Anyways, enough complaining ffs. We went back home to Australia for two weeks and it was great! We left on Monday 22nd and after flying to LA we boarded Qantas' new A380 for the trip to Melbourne. The new aircraft is impressive to look at, larger than a 747 and very sleek. There have been reports of it being too quiet if you can believe it, the cabin noise apparently so low that people can hear each other talk from many rows away, removing the sense of privacy you feel with the roar of jets in your ears. I can say that the jet is quiet, much quieter than any others I've flown, but the steady drone of the engines is still there and load enough to mask conversations etc. The most disconcerting part of flying it is the take off when I was expecting the engines to spool up and make a real noise, they didn't really, the plane just accelerated forward with little increase in noise, a bit weird. Sadly with the economic downturn IBM has mandated coach travel even though we qualified for Business Class, so we didn't get to enjoy the new luxury appointments of the AirBus. But coach was still nice in a brand new plane, no wear and tear and spanking new touch wide-screen LCD's in each seat back showing heaps of entertainment on-demand. The last time we flew home the plane got straight to cruising altitude and they immediately served dinner (despite it being after midnight LA time) so we didn't feed the kids in LAX. But due to turbulence the cabin crew didn't serve any food until about 3 hours into the flight. This left the kids hungry and tired, so although I was able to scrounge some snacks for them we had to keep them awake longer than we would have liked.The 15 hour flight passed like 15 hours of watching grass grow, although a few VB's helped me through the pain. We all got a few hours sleep and I think we were all feeling pretty good by the time we touched down in Melbourne around 10am, a little late. It was nice to breeze through customs and immigration, especially after the last time :-). Marty VDB had offered to pick us up and there he was calling 'Stiffy!' as we exited customs, outstanding! That evening we had drinks with the VDB's, Hills and Flanagans, friends and cousins overjoyed at being back together finally.

Christmas Day was great, pretty much the whole Rhodes and Stiff families made it to Monbulk, the biggest gathering since Stan's 80'th a few years ago. Our local Oakville paper has a readers photos section where people take photos of themselves holding the paper in locations around the world. Bev had brought a young kangaroo that she was caring for and the kids had their photo taken with it and the front page of our Oakville local paper in hand. I've emailed the photo to the paper so hopefully the kids, and the roo, will be in the next issue. Trish and Kean put on a great spread, cleverly outsourcing the food from Kean's golf club. On Boxing Day I enjoyed watching some cricket for the first time in years and Trish and Kean headed off to a beach house for the week.Our plan was to meet up with the VDB's down at Corinella where they have a vacant lot and camp with them for a few days. We dusted off our camper, the kids helped alot with that, and we then drove down to Corinella in the Subaru. Once there Marty and I took his Rodeo back to Monbulk to pick up the camper as the Subaru doesn't have the guts to haul it. Finally we hooked up the trailer, troubleshot a tail-light/brake wiring issue and drove the camper back down to the beach. Three hour plus trips later I could finally relax. Unfortunately while the temp at Corinella was okay, in the low 20's, the wind kept blowing pretty hard keeping us off the water, and it rained each night. After a couple of days of this, and Jazz coming down with a mild case of tonsillitis, we decided to throw in the towel and break camp for New Years Eve in Monbulk.

So eventually the weather improved and we were able to hit the beach and Marty took us out on his boat for some fishing. Lots of flathead hit our hooks but only 8 or so were a good size out of our 50+ catches. The kids enjoyed the water, salt for a change :-), and we all got a little too much sun. In all we had a great trip, even though the kids had their bouts of sickness and we felt pretty tired the whole time. Thanks to our friends and family for making the trip so much fun and special thanks to Trish and Kean for really going out of their way to make us feel at home and working their butts off during their own holidays to make sure we were pointing in the right direction on a daily basis. We can't thank you guys enough.Now we're back in Canada and it's cold, we're getting more snow so far this year than we've had in any previous year. I used Eriks snow blower the other day and I have to admit it's much nicer than my shovel :-). Today I'm in Winnipeg again for another Mon-Thurs gig at Canadian Wheat Board. Thank goodness that it's not minus 49 this week, last week was tough to take as you might have seen from my tweets. Anyway we're back into it and all finally feeling well and in our normal routines. Next week we head off to Mt Tremblant for 3 days of skiing the big hill, can't wait for it!

Andy, out.