Food & Wine

Mudgee wine producers arranged the Manly Food & Wine festival on Sunday. It was a very pleasant way of spending an afternoon. You start off buying a tasting-glass and a bunch of coupons. Then you wonder around the stalls and exchange the coupons for half a standard glass of wine. They also had cheese and seafood stalls. We found a sunny spot and took turns in finding interesting wines to taste. We also had some excellent deep-fried calamari, garlic prawns and an interesting cheese I don't remember the name of. It was a cross between a brie and a Cheddar... I bought 3 bottles of a very nice Semillion which I took home for later. They were $22 each, way more than I normally spend, so they will have to wait for some extra special occasion or at least until I have run out of the cheaper stuff...

Anzac Day

25th April is Anzac day and all the shops are closed in the morning, so that people will go and watch the ANZAC Day parade (as there is nothing else to do). I was going to a friend in Balmain in the afternoon so walked off to the ferry just in time for the Manly Anzac Day Parade. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and was initially to honor the those who fought in Turkey during World War I. Now it honors all those who served & serves in military operations for Australia and New Zealand. So the parade was basically of people who are war veterans and current serving in the military. In Manly they added scouts and Surf Life Saving Club members as well for some reason...
When I got into the city it was all closed off and there were thousands of people marching throughout the city. It was very tricky to move around but thanks to underpasses in various places I finally managed to get to a bus stop with a bus.
The afternoon was pleasant with cake at my friend's place.

Trip to Canberra

We went to visit Australia's little known Capital of Canberra over the weekend. I have never been there and my friend Charissa was running the Canberra Marathon. For this excursion we rented a car as the old Mazda was too risky and uncomfortable and is really a horrible car.
Picked up Charissa and Terry around 9 am and set off to Canberra. Unfortunately we did not wait for the SatNav to decide which route we would take until after we set off, which caused some initial trouble. Apparently it was set to "shortest route" rather than "fastest route" and we got to see some parts of Sydney we would not normally have driven trough… Eventually we made it onto the high way and after around 3 hours of nothing we entered Canberra. It really was nothing. We set off a game of "I Spy with my little I, something beginning with x", but after having done Car, Road, Sky, Cloud & Tree - we gave up. After 2h Terry spotted "wire" at the edge of the road!
If you look at the attached map - you'll see it is really in the middle of nowhere!
http://www.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Eurobin+Ave,+Manly+NSW+2095,+Australia&daddr=terry+street,+rozelle+to:canberra&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=-33.785781,151.282553&sspn=0.009309,0.012145&ie=UTF8&z=8
Our initial plan was to drop our stuff off at the hotel and then have lunch. However it looked like there was nothing in the area - so we went back into the CBD and found an open pub. Afterwards we then walked to the park where the 5km fun run that Terry was doing was to start. Canberra is very strange. Huge boulevards with no traffic and no people. Monuments and museums, but really nothing else. Very empty and odd. When we got there we found out he had missed the 5km run and he now had to do 10km, which he had never done before. But not to worry, Terry did very well. He passed us 5 times and we all cheered on him.
In the evening we went out to a seafood restaurant where they had great lobsters.
Sunday we went to cheer on Charissa at 25km, 27km, 38km and finish. They started at 7 am and run that part in the mountains - so too much trouble to start earlier. Charissa finished at 3:56h.
While Charissa recovered with a shower we did sightseeing (The old bus depot market, glass works and railway museum - closed), then we met up for lunch. Charissa, who has not been drinking for weeks in her Marathon preparation was downing the beers at the speed of light!

Drive home was long and boring and weather bad, but we got to go on a new route and pay toll charges on the Eastern Distributor, which was different!

Not easy spending money on Good Friday

NSW has funny Easter Holiday opening hours, even stranger than the UK. On Good Friday Department stores, Supermarkets, Furniture, Clothing and Electrical Stores have to be closed. However small businesses, for example takeaway food, chemists & newsagents can be open. Unless you are in Central Sydney, then there are no restitrictions, as it is the Sydney Business District and has to be kept open.

In Manly, The book store was closed, as well as the larger clothes stores, but the the chemist which also sells clothes and the newsagent which also sells both books & clothes, maybe even as many as the book store, is open, but they cannot sell lottery tickets…
The restaurants do not open until 12, unless they serve breakfast, and the same goes for pubs. However we did finally manage to get to one of our favourites, the North Steyn Hotel roof terrace!

A rocking boat

We went to see "the Boat that Rocked" on the Manly cinema yesterday. It is not a great cinema, but if we do not support it we'll have to go into the city, which is hard work. The movie was good though. It is about 1966 in the UK. The BBC was the only legal radio station, and they did not think it was suitable to play rock-music. The result was that many pirate radio stations, based on ships that were anchored around the UK coast transmitted this music instead. This was not entirely legal, but not entirely illegal either until a BBC boss decided to make it properly illegal both for them to transmit and for people to listen. There is a lot of great music, and although it is all acting, it could well have been true. One of my favourite British DJs Johnnie Walker, started out as a DJ on Radio Caroline, which was based on a ship in the North Sea. After the ending of Pirate Radio Johnnie and most of the others got their own channel at BBC and many are still there.

New books - where do they go?

I've been waiting ages for the latest Lee Child book to be released in Australia. We were having a post-work beer at the Bavarian Beir Cafe on Manly Wharf and a girl walked in with it. Wow, I set off to Warringah Mall to buy it the following morning, and next to it was the new James Patterson book and both were on special offer. Great! Books are expensive in Australia. There is some law that states books have to be printed locally and they also add VAT.
However, back home I am wondering where to put them. All my bookcases are full and most double-stacked. I could go to IKEA to buy some new ones, but no use, the IKEA web-site told me that the oak veneer finish I have my bookcases in is not sold in Australia... so I can buy one in a completely different wood, or wait until oak becomes popular here... or possible take a car ferry to New Zealand and take on back from there.

Happy Easter - don't work too hard!

Work has been an actual nightmare for the past couple of weeks with more problems coming in than possible to resolve in such a short time, and with me setting out in the morning to cut down the amount of e-mail in my in-box, but I still have 200 more in the evening. Thursday I was seriously concerned I would have to work all weekend to clear things up. However miraculously I left at 4 pm on Thursday, had an hours conference call in the care and finished the work-week feeling I would probably be able to relax a bit. Don't take me wrong, I like being busy, but for a while now I have been bit bit snowed under.
Good Friday I relaxed. Watched my favourite episode of "Grand Designs" in bed in the morning (a British couple converting an old waterworks into a home), leisurely breakfast, walk to Shelley beach where I read my book (James Patterson - 8th confession), back into into Manly and a few beers at the North Steyne Hotel, roof-top bar and another movie in the afternoon. I made pancakes and popcorn and fell asleep in-front of the telly.
Unfortunately today I logged on to work e-mail, as I abruptly ended a discussion of weekend meet-up with a friend and was not sure if she had sent something after I left. She had, and I also had a whole page of e-mails, some quite urgent stating one of my products did not work. I texted 3 colleagues who could help solve the problems, and at 10am on Easter Saturday I got two responses within 3 minutes. Great guys! We spent the morning sorting out the problems and customer called at lunchtime - thankful. So now, I am re-starting watching a movie and getting on with being relaxed.
Happy Easter everyone, and try not to look at your work-mail ;=)

Beach Closed

We have had an amazing storm the past 18 hours or so. They said on the news the waves were up to 9m between Sydney and Manly, and I am both happy and a bit disappointed I worked from home yesterday and thus did not get to take the ferry. I did take it in today though and it was lots of fun. I could not resist sitting outside at the front, as I wanted to take a picture of the one going the other way, but misjudged the waves and got very wet, this is me sitting on the top floor. There were lots of people filming etc.
The beach has been closed as well, and theoretically there should be no surfers, but I think maybe a few did show up anyway. The roar from the surf is so high I had to close the balcony door to sleep, but it has been fun. We have enough sunny days to appreciate a few of these every now and then.