A change of writer.

Jan has decided that it's time I took back the job of posting to our blog. She has done it (or not done it some would say) for a while now but has her own hanji blog to look after now and finds two too many. Plus all the other things that she's engaged in! So, here goes.

Firstly, no promises as to how often I'm going to do this. Going by what I've said in the past, I obviously have trouble keeping promises! It also looks like our photo albums could do with a bit of an update!

I see Jan told you a little about our summer holidays and the fun we had with our six grandchildren. And my how they've grown since I saw them last. So what I'll try and do over the next few posts is write a little bit about what else we did and who we caught up with during the long break. For those of you who read Jan's facebook, you might already know some of these things but I am told that not everybody has a facebook account. Shock, horror.

We live in a two story house and have had a wireless network running in the house for a while now. However, it has not been very successful as the modem and wireless router are upstairs and the signal  is pretty weak downstairs. As our computers are upstairs it wasn't too much of a problem except the Apple TV used to drop out all the time and I got very fed up with having to continually log it on again. Last year, after talking to Darius (eldest son) I bought one of those gizmos that allows you to use your house wiring as a LAN and haven't had any trouble since. However, with the introduction of i-pads into the household it has been a problem again with the weak downstairs signal. I've been debating about what to do for a while now and finally bit the bullet yesterday and bought a wireless access point that I could connect directly to the previously mentioned gizmo. Hey Presto!! Full signal downstairs now allowing Jan to play her internet scrabble games from any chair that she wants to.

OK, that's enough of all that for now. I have other jobs to do so will sign off for now. But, I'll be back.

Yes I will. I promise.

Oh so long.........

Tamika & Jasmine

Isaac

I can't believe that it's been so long since we wrote anything on our blog.  

We had thought that not many people were reading our posts anymore so with time commitments and a sense of moving on we stopped writing.  

During our summer break we were asked by so many of our friends why we haven't been keeping it up so here we are once again folks. 

Angus

I'd like to dedicate this post to our 6 wonderful grandchildren, Jasmine, Tamika, Isaac, Lucian, Angus and Talia.  We were able to catch up with them all during our long holiday and, although it entailed travelling half way around the world to see them all, it was worth it.  

Talia

Jasmine and Tamika our eldest have been at school now for almost a year and are growing quite tall, which isn't surprising considering their parents.  They love playing together and cajoling Angus into playing Mothers and Fathers with them.

We have  three  grandsons all born within  within 6 months of one another. 

Isaac has his birthday first and we happened to be in Adelaide to share in his  3rd birthday celebrations. His party was held at a Play Gym Cafe (a first for us) where the children get to play on the indoor equipment whilst the adults can sit, chat and have a coffee. When the children were ready to eat, out came the cake as well as other goodies for them all to enjoy. 

Lucian is in London and the next eldest and he likes music, books and playing with his Duplo.  Most days when we were there he would say,  'Nan/Pop will you play with me?'.  He loves building things and he has a great imagination.

Lucian

Angus the youngest of the three boys is growing into quite a little man as he tries to keep up with his two older sisters Jasmine and Tamika. He stands up to his sisters when he has to but he also has a very endearing and gentle nature.  

Talia our youngest is a toddler who enjoys running around everywhere and copying her older brother whom she adores.

Jasmine, Tamika and Isaac all managed a sleepover at Nan and Pop's and we were able to have some special time with each of them as well as share in some family get togethers.  Sean and Leanne even put on a Christmas in July for us which was a lovely surprise.

They're all amazing children and a true credit to their parents. 

I'm sure I've used this saying before but  'Grandchildren (truely) complete the circle of Love'

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Turkey

 What does your mind think of when you think of Turkey?  All I knew of it was that it was a vibrant city of 17 million people which has a lot of history.  I'd read about it in some Turkish novels about the beautiful Blue Mosque  and the fact that it was situated very close to the Bosphorous Sea.

Well all this became very real for Ron and I when we visited Turkey in late January and these first photos are of the city of Istanbul on the Bosphorous and the Blue Mosque.  

The inside of the Blue Mosque was covered with blue tiles, hence it's name and  I'd expected to get some good photos of the tiles but they've somehow managed to suspend lights across the entire inside making it difficult to photograph because of all the electrical wiring suspended from the ceiling.  Nevertheless I could see beauty in the fittings themselves and photographed right through them !!!!

Another amazing site we visited was the Hagia Sophia  or Church of Holy Wisdom which is a Byzantine church dedicated in 536. Architects today still marvel at the design which was quite unique and ahead of it's time. During it's history it was converted to a Mosque therefore they added the huge Arabic signs on the walls but fortunately they didn't destroy the Christian paintings and early Christian mosaics.  It's now a Museum.  We spent hours in there soaking up the atmosphere and wandering around the building where people a century ago also trod.

During our stay in Istanbul I (Jan) turned 60!!!!  To celebrate we went to the Pera Palace Hotel in the evening for dinner. It used to be the Hotel that they would put up the people travelling on the original Orient Express and it's just recently been done up.  The story goes that Agatha Christie also spent a lot of time in the Hotel therefore the restaurant is now called the Agatha Restaurant.  The fittings were superb, the decor was spectacular and the food was to die for.  Both Ron and I said afterwards that we'd never had a better fine dining meal  experience before and it was all we could have asked for to help celebrate my birthday in this amazing city. 

We saw the Grand Bazaar markets, the Spice Souk, the Topkapki Palace and Taxsim square.  We rode the trams, trains and took taxis and went for a couple of ferry rides on the Bosphorous right up as far as the Black Sea. The food throughout our stay was fantastic with lots of fresh European type salads, seafood, kebabs, meatballs and yiros type sandwiches.  They even have some half decent wines available which we tried whenever we could.  This picture was taken at a fish restaurant at a little fishing village out near the entrance to the Black Sea. The cat was pleading with me for some food until the waiter went and chased him away. I'm sure he would have come back to try it on the next customers sitting at that table.

We also took a day trip to Gallipoli.  It's around 450kms from Istanbul but we decided as Aussies(1 real one and 1 by default) we had an obligation to visit this famous site. We hired a driver and when we got there we had a guide who showed us around for about 3 hours. They were both terrific and as we travelled down and back we learnt a lot about the Turkish people and their culture through talking to the driver and in Gallipoli we had a young guide who was  passionate about the history of the First World War and he'd really done his research so we learnt such a lot from him as well.   We came away very pleased we'd taken the time to go and confident in the fact that the Turkish people are very much our  friends but quite reflective on the senselessness of war.

This is just little of what we did in the 10 days we were away but I hope it gives you a glimpse of Turkey and I really hope you  may be able to visit there one day, we would  love to return and experience it in the warmer weather and  see more of the country.

365 day Photographic Diary

I've decided to make a new Year's Resolution. This year it is to make a 365 day Photography Diary.

This means that every day of the year I will take at least one photograph and each week there is to be a particular theme.

This should help me to get to know my camera better and  help me focus on a particular theme. This weeks theme is 'macro'.

Now I don't have a macro lens for my camera so it's made me work out ways that I can get around this problem and make the most of the lenses I do have. They aren't true macro but mainly just closeups.Here are a sample of photos I've taken over the last few days. 

Sheba & Pushkin ........

Last year I posted a photo of our cat Pushkin.   This is  Pushkin's mother, Sheba.  We've had her for nearly 3 years now and she's about 3 1/2 years old. She has a lovely gentle nature and loves to jump onto my knee in the evenings if I'm watching TV. She's always waiting outside our door in the mornings ready for a rub against our legs and a walk down the stairs with us.  We've grown very fond of her and especially look forward to seeing her when we return from work and she's waiting at the gate.   Pushkin is still with us and the two of them follow one another around. If one is sitting on the chair then the other one wants to be there as well. If I'm at the computer they both want to be lying on the desk.           They give us a lot of enjoyment so I thought I'd share just a little about them here on the blog.

Amateur Photographers

During Darius and Kristi's stay Darius and I managed to walk down to the corniche  and take a few photos of the mosque.  Here are some of our

photographs.

Happy New Year 2011 !!!

We hope you've all had a great festive season spent with family and friends. We were fortunate enough to have Darius, Kristi and little Lucian visit us here in RAK in late December on their way back to Australia.

We managed to fit in quite a few things in the short time they were here including a trip into Oman to Mussandam  and a day on the waters of the Arabian Gulf. We had an early morning start one morning to see the camel races following by brunch at the Hilton Hotel and a visit to one of my student's properties to see his animals followed by a wonderful spread of food in his home.

Thank you Saeed you were a wonderful host.

It was also great to be able to share gifts from under the Christmas tree with family as well.

Here are a few photos of what we got up to. Darius and I spent a lot of time taking photographs and with his wide angle lens he took some amazing pictures.  The one at the beginning of this post is a good example of what he was able to capture of the beauty of Mussandam. 

Knee Replacement

If you've been wondering what I've been doing with my time lately I've had a bit of repair work done on my left knee.
So here 'tis .............

My New Bionic Knee .......

Switzerland

Well folks it was a long time coming but I've finally put together some of our photos from Switzerland.  I hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed the experience that was, 'Switzerland by Rail'.  Ron visited Switzerland as a schoolboy of 14 so there was some nostalgic elements for him in the trip 48 years later !!!!! It was wonderful to be able to meet up with Heather, Neil and Ian in Montreaux and spend a couple of days exploring the area together. 
The picture on the heading is a panoramic shot of Lake Geneva at sunset from our hotel balcony.

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London beat........

Airports, Immigration, customs, baggage claims, different beds, pillows, people and places........

This was our life for the Summer of 2010.

As you'll see by our previous blogs we left the UAE for the summer break and headed to some different and some more familiar places to catch up with family and friends as well as to explore  new places along the way.

We did so much and there's so much to tell but for now here is a snippet of our time in the UK through photography.











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San Francisco there we went........

Golden Gate Bridge

From New Zealand we headed over to San Francisco.  It was to be our first visit to the west coast of the USA and we weren't disappointed with what we saw. To make things easy we got a hop on hop off bus pass for 48 hours and became 'real' tourists for a few days. It's not normally our thing to be taken around with loads of other tourists but sometimes with time at a premium we've found it the best way to cover all the highlights of a sprawling city.

Fisherman's wharf

Powell St Cable car

It is mid summer and school holidays here in the northern hemisphere so things were pretty crowded but we managed to get around to some interesting sights and take lots of photos. The cable car stopped right outside our hotel so we headed to Fisherman's wharf to sample their famous seafood chowder. It wasn't as rustic as I had expected  as my vision was of fishermen hauling in their loads for the day and plonking them on the wharf, yelling out to find the highest bidder for their catch. It must happen somewhere on the wharf but it wasn't obvious to us as we wandered along the road.  It's very touristy with lots of souvenir shops, restaurants, take away places and amusement parks . All that being said, it was interesting to actually be there and to see the giant crabs and the myriad of different types of seafood being cooked on the streets  right in front of our eyes.

Painted Ladies

We visited the brightly coloured 'Painted ladies', a row of seven beautifully restored Victorian houses in Alamo Square. *The same term used to apply to prostitutes in the old days (in an era when prostitutes would wear cosmetics unlike respectable women who didn't).* We ventured over the Golden Gate bridge to a lovely seaside town called Sausalito and stopped to see where only the rich and famous can afford to live and  enjoy a quieter and more relaxed lifestyle, except for all the tourists spoiling their little corner of the world !!!!
We went to a silent film festival screening of an old French film from the early 1930's and stepped around the corner from our hotel in Union Square to see a premier performance of the musical the 'Fantasticks'. It was brilliant with top class performers and singers who've appeared on Broadway, TV and in movies.

House mural

One of the things I wanted to get in the US was an ipad so we headed for the Apple store only to find they were out of stock and it would take about a week to get :(  After some investigations we found out that they had some at Santa Rosa which was out of town. At 4pm in the afternoon we hopped on a bus and 1 1/2 hours later reached the store, bought an ipad each and then hopped back on the bus for another 2 1/2 hour ride back to San Francisco. The later bus wasn't an express but we were happy knowing we had achieved our goal and we had them at last.  They're fantastic by the way and they've been extremely useful during our travels.

Where we have been.

Loyal readers of our blog must be wondering where we have been for the last month.  Some of you we've actually been able to catch up with in person and others unfortunately we haven't. Well, after leaving Australia, we headed to New Zealand to stay with some good NZ friends of ours who are working in the UAE but who were back on leave in their home country.

Auckland - July'10

Pink sheep, a 2000 year old Kauri tree and a trip to a family pine plantation, these were some of the things we did and saw with our NZ friends Grant and Julie.

We were met at the airport and soon we were whisked away to spend some time in the Northlands of NZ. For those of you, who like me had never heard this term, it is that area north of Auckland and including the ninety mile beach at the very tip of the north island.  Grant's family has owned a pine plantation of considerable size for nearly 40 years now. They have a holiday home on the plantation site where generations of the Anderson family have spent many a peaceful weekend enjoying nature and solitude amongst the pines. The trees take around 28 years before they reach maturity, are cut down and logged. The property is managed by an eccentric 'muso' caretaker who draws from the peace and quiet inspiration for his songwriting and his creative energies.

The weather was great for this time of the year and we managed sunny days for the majority of our time there. We were taken to the Bay of Islands, ninety mile beach, past quaint country towns and many dairy farms. We were surprised at how there seemed to be a great abundance of cattle compared to sheep these days and apparently it's all to do with the farmers need to diversify in these economic times.  We did see an amazing sight though of pink sheep on the hillside.  We didn't stop to ask why !!!!

In our travels we past through the Waipoua Forest with the oldest known Kauri tree in NZ which is purportedly around 2000 years old. It's called Te Matau Ngahere, or "Father of the forest" and measures approximately 800 rings. 

Read more: Kauri Tree Facts | eHow.com 

After a few wonderful days up north we spent some time looking around Auckland itself.  We visited the museum, many different restaurants, the volcanic 'one tree hill' and some of the wonderful parks throughout the city.  We were impressed by the size and complexity of the city and like most places we've visited we'd love to return to explore it some more.

All good things must come to an end....

Another few weeks have passed and we must be moving on.


We've been enjoying almost a month of catching up with family and friends. Life has been busy as we've tried to cram into a few weeks what we would normally have done over a period of six months or more, if we were living here in Adelaide, South Australia.


We've travelled from Mc Claren Vale to Mawson Lakes to spend nights, whole days, a mealtime or even just a few hours with our family, children, grandchildren and many of our special friends.

Some people we've known  since childhood, some we've met and worked with over the years both here in Adelaide, in Korea or in Malaysia.

Many of our family and friends have taken the opportunity to visit us overseas and have enjoyed holidays with us and developed an understanding of where we are, what we're doing and what we're about.


 Farewell adieu, we will return ...........