Australia Day 2011

Born and bred Australians, Tourists and immigrants celebrate why it's great to be in Australia today and toast to the lucky country.

Today there is no better place than to be on the water in the Sydney harbour. Except... drum roll... in a helicopter above the ferrython race. The ferrython is a race between 4 of the ferries that usually help the rat-racers with their daily commute.

Yep, my credit card as now attained the critical mass state and is about to go into a complete melt-down, but I did get a private helicopter charter... on Australia day... above the Sydney harbour.

As you can see Kieran disapproves of this flight and can be heard over the mighty roar of the engine. Every boat in the New South Whales has got to be here.

Emma's pleasantly surprised when I tell her that the day isn't over as we hurry to one of the cruise ships to go on the harbour. It's really hot, but fortunately there's a cloud-cover. A very good day, indeed.

Brisbane Floods

Thanks to all that have mailed, Skyped, MSN'ed, phoned, hyvesed, facebooked, faxed, texted us. It seems that world news has picked up on the situation here in Brisbane.


So here's an update. It is pretty bad down here, but perhaps not as bad as some of the Media will have us believe. Our Home is high and dry so we will not suffer from the floods. I have 2 colleagues whose homes are currently wet and that will get much worse today and tomorrow when the Brisbane river is expected to peak.
The amount of rain fallen is simply unheard off, up to 300 liters of water per square meter in 24 hours.


Thanks for thinking about us.

Beached as... in Agnes Water

Whoa! I think I have seen the most intense rain ever. It's been raining for days and days but today tops it all. To give you an idea: Go and stand under the shower, crank up the pressure so that it hurts. That's a lot of water right? Now do that for 16 hours straight.

Just to give you an idea: an area of France and Germany is currently flooded and we're in the middle of it. The town of Agnes Waters has 2 roads.

Road 1 has a Bridge with 8 meters of water over it. So that's: Standing on the Bridge you'd have to swim up 8 meters to get a breath of air.

Road 2 has "only" half a meter of water over it, but it goes for miles and miles.

Basically we're stuck in a 4 star resort with pools and beach. There are worse places to be at this time. 200.000 people have suffered damage varying from losing a car to losing a home. It's pretty bad.

What really intrigues me is that a couple of months ago a few specialists predicted this weather. They made a pretty convincing case about la Nina (a sub effect of el Niño). Their predictions so far have been spot-on.

Singapore

I'm Working in Singapore this week, so I figured why not try my luck at the poker tables in the biggest Hotel in the neighborhood.

Okay, at the entry I get refused because I'm carrying a plastic bag. Right, I say to myself, no worries, these Singaporeans are easily scared, and after all, this is a very dangerous looking plastic bag, I could easily choke 12 people with it before they catch me. I can see why Plastic bags containing a t-shirt is considered extremely dangerous.

After 30 minutes of waiting for 10 people to hand in their bags it's my turn and I'm getting impatient. Okay, off I go to the entry...

Nope not yet: there is a 50 people queue that is moving very slowly forward. After 15 minutes I make it to the Casino floor.

It's huge, thousands of people could get in, but there are only a few hundred. Right, keen to play poker I ask where the poker pit is at to one of the employees.

- Mate, where can I find the poker tables

- ah? Pokah no hee.

- What's that mate, no Poker?

- djes djes, pokah no hee.

- This is a Casino, right?

- djes.

- Okay well, where the bar?

- No Bah hee.

- Say what? No bar? wtf man?

- No Bah hee, no alcohol allad, only watta.

- Right, that's it, bugger this I'm outta here. 

So after having to wait another 20 minutes to get my leathal plastic bag back, I decide never to come back and take the elevator to the roof. The Infinity pool and sky park are stunning and I enjoy a beer staring at Singapore.

Grandma's visit.

Yep, after, both aunties and grandpa it was grandma's turn to make the gruelling trip down under to visit. We took her to see the special Australian fauna and showed her some places we like to visit every once and a while.

Of course we took the opportunity to use our god-send babysitter and had Kieran taken care off.

The weather wasn't the best, as it hasn't been a really great summer so far. But then again, getting fried in 35 degrees isn't exactly fun either.