pinball and boost

DAY 8.
The plan for today was simply, pack and go home.

a quite amusing obstacle in the way was to roll up the sleeping mat that keen and andrea lent us for makhyah. it was quite frustrating until i realised that we were trying to fit a bit roll into a little sleeping bag bag... durr... it wasnt funny until we worked it out.

we got picked up to go to the airport around 12. and we had a little bit of time to kill at the airport. so i bought makhyah a king william from boost (you'd love that hey mick? he is your godson) and then we played some simpsons pinball (pretty difficult to do whilst supportuing a 2 year old, but we went ok...

jumped on the plane. mj fell asleep near the end... we had to wake him and he was very grumpy.
kristy picked us up and we went home...
the end
of our holiday that is...

kansas, we're not in tho tho anymore

DAY 7.
Cruisy morning.
Then we headed up to highpoint shops. spent a while up there.
trammed it back home. got off the tram too early and had to walk a fair way (not too bad, but any walking was a big deal by this time).
got home to realise we had to leave straight away. makhyah was asleep so we just left him on the front porch (nice breeze actually).

so... let me now mention the main thing that annoyed me about the house we stayed at. the lace (i call it lattice, but everyone else assured me it was lace - you know that metal decorative stuff hanging from the eaves)... well... this lace was in a perfect spot for me to crack my head... and well... up to this point i had done so on at least 3 occassions, but this was the big one.
BANG!!! my natural instinct to yell was quelled from within for my sons sleeps sake, so i went mental in the front yard kicking and stamping... at this point the neighbors were saying "oh, so thats where our village idiot lives". it hurt so much...
anyways...
get on with it!

we caught a tram into the city, then after almost waiting for one that didnt run til later, we got a tram (or 2?) to victoria st richmond (little vietnam) and went to tho tho (just pronounced to to) for some late lunch, early dinner, linner, dunch... i dunno...
good stuff again.

after that we all jumped on a train, got off at jollymont, walked past the G (or the M if you're me - the MCG that is) and over to vodafone again for the basketball.
saw 2 good games - womens - england vs mozambique (england won - i think it was england, im a bit confused now)... and then the mens NZ vs Nigeria. By the 2nd game makhyah was shouting "GO Mozamgeria!"... he had a ball.
We saw Andrew Gaze (a little too far away for a photo), and had a great night.

we then headed back to the tram and home again. another late night, but not quite such a big day. last night in melbourne... but it was a good way to go out!

from saint kilda to... ascot vale?

DAY 6.
we decided to go down to saint kilda today. we met up with kenn and andrea in there.
2 reasons to go to saint kilda
1 - the time trial in the cycling was on there
2 - cakes

so we went to funky little bakery/cafe for brunch. i should have got the eggs benedict - andrea did and they were just enormous!! anyways, i enjoyed my breakfast. nakari bought some cakes - canoli, caramel slice, vanilla slice and some others.

we watched both the mens and womens cycling for a bit (womens before brunch, mens after) and i got a great photo of Mr lion with nathan oneil (the gold medalist) clycling past - a very difficult photo to get (much more luck than skill trust me).
then after several hours down there, we headed for the tram - via 7/11 to get slurpies - and got a photo of some cops with mr lion (the cops were eating gelato so we thought it was cool).
then we headed home, for what proved to be the smallest day yet.
we wandered back up the road to get noodles for dinner and chilled watching some more games.
so tired by now - conscious decision to make tommorow another small day.

a melbourne lunch

DAY 5.
indulged by another makhyah free morning, this time we overslept a little and headed into the city to meet up with mum and dad (with mj ofcourse). we left home just before 9.

we decided to meet up in the city, as karz wanted to go check out melbourne central, as well as having breakfast at one of the little funky cafes in the old school market style section. we walked up latrobe st, met with mum and dad, and after a little wandering we decided on a little place, that actually was alot bigger on the inside.

let me tell you melbourne food is cheap (in general). This place looked exy, but it sure wasnt. karz and i both got the eggs benedict which were 2 eggs, a heap of ham and stax of holandaise on a huge chunk of toasted turkish bread (with adjectives like that you'd think i'd been doing maccas ads). After breakfast we went our seperate ways... mum and dad off to the squash, us 3 up to myer to get some decent shoes for nakari. we found some good adidas on special, so that did the trick, with me sporting my new brooks beasts we both had much less chance of saw feet and legs (karz had been getting some sort of shin splints).

we then met kenn and andrea outside the men in the window again. after a brief chat we headed off to the state hockey and netball centre whilst andrea hung round the city with makhyah (who fell alseep pretty quickly).

we caught a tram in, and after walking the long way (and doing a lap round the zoo) we got to the hockey. first up we saw the women's - england v barbados. england smashed them, then we saw the means - india vs trinidad and tobago (i thought it was unfair that 2 teams played against one, but india still came up trumps - t&t scored a goal though, so that was good. . at the hockey we ate our home packed lunch. which consisted of lots of turkish bread and 5 different dips (they're listed bellow). yummo!

after leaving the hockey we caught up with andrea and makhyah again. kenn and andrea needed to do some shopping (or something, i cant remember), so we went to the fed square ampitheatre and saw 5 angry men - the bells. it was amazing! these 5 guys put on this street theatre show which was them jumping around like they were pulling on giant bells (the ropes had bungee in them or something)... it was pretty full on - one of them dies in the show. but makhyah wasnt scared and really enjoyed it (mj was aking for days - "want to see men jump now... wanna see jumping men". he enjoyed the photos when we got home.
as we hopped up to go, we saw geoffrey rush... unfortunately he was in too much of a rush, and mr lion didnt get a photo.

we then wandered a fair way down swanston st, and ate a this funky vietnamese place. nice and cheap again - how surpising - i got rice paper rolls. after dinner we wandered back towards fed square... i performed an amazing trick on the way back. kenn had left his water bottle on top of the stroller, it slipped out and began rolling towards the road, so i decided to try and stop it with my foot... applying a little too much downward pressure i stopped the pump water bottle but also managed to spray it out everywhere, almost hitting an unsuspecting pedestrian. about 5 groups of ppl walking all stopped and laughed. at this nakari and andrea also laughed, and laughed some more. it was rather amusing i guess. i recomended to the crowd to try the rice paper rolls and we continued to walk.

around this time i got another photo of mr lion with some atheletes this time mens triathaletes from the solomon islands. pretty cool.

after that we had a bit of a wander across the river, and went down to see the show with all the fish.
makhyah enjoyed this too (we saw the show go off at 9pm and 10pm). we then went and got coffee - but i got juice - emma and toms, a brand that i was not familair with, but will be trying again. i trusted the lady behind the counter, took her recomendation and tried green power - it was nice - looked grosse, but tasted great.

after that we stumbled on a tram and headed back home. we arrived home somewhere around 11.30. a very big day.

Excuse me... let me freak you out for a second

DAY 4.
After a slow start. We jumped on a tram back to the city to meet up with Kenn, Andrea and Makhyah, at Gloria Jeans at the end of the burke st mall. After catching up for a bit, we wandered over to the myer windows, where 4 guys are living in the window space for 2 weeks. Its so cool. The space was done up with 4 rooms (left to right) - kitchen, dinning/multi-purpose, bedroom, bathroom. And you could see everything (they had the toilet tucked away and some strategically placed vinyl over the shower screen. they were just getting going on the lazy sunday morning, but one of the guys had a bit of dialogue (?) with makhyah, which he thought was cool. just a really interesting concept...
After that we wandered for a bit. We stopped for a while at the corner of swanston and spencer where the marathon was running past. we cheered, and got a photo of Mr Lion there. M?J was requesting for the rest of the day "i wanna say go runners". after leaving kenn and andrea round lunch time, we went down to alexandra gardens, watched the big screen for a while, had an ice cream, said "go runners" a couple of times, and jumped back on a tram. we jumped off just up the road (other side of the city) to go to the vic markets again.

we had to go to furgeson plaire to get more custard tart (they were out) and also some more dip. I bought Spicy morocan lentil, sundried tomato and feta, and pine nut and spinach. yummo. At the market, i scared the living daylights out of 3 atheletes from namibia. i wanted to get a photo of them with Mr Lion. I realise now, how scary i am to 3 female gymnasts (the oldest may have been 17). Anyways, they were happy to be in the photo.
We jumped back on the tram, back to ascot vale.

once home we got ready to go out for dinner. right about now i found out that iu would be the only guy there. all the others had bailed, so it was basically an all girl high school catch up. i reluctantly continued as planned. we dropped mj off with my mum and dad on the way, and then went to the moskito bar at clipton hill.

it was a good night. the only let down was that one girl that everyone told me i would get along really well with... didnt show up (thanx bianca, whoever you are). i managed to have a chat with one of the girls about music, so i was happy. another one was a chef, so that was nice to talk food (we didnt talk for too long, i think she was a bit over the whole food thing). so it wasnt a late night. I had the rissotto again (lamb and rosemary this time), and we called it a night about 10pm. We went home via Alaysia (spelling) to get turkish bread. and crashed out after another big day.

Mr Lion

Right about now i need to quickly mention Mr Lion.
Mr Lion is a stuffed toy from Makhyah's kindy.
They get anyone who is going on holidays to take it with them and have some photos of it (at landmarks and stuff like that).
So, we took Mr Lion... unfortunately we didnt have him with us when we saw Lisa Curry, but oh well... So... I will mention him sometime im sure... just so we know who we're talking about yeah?

let me just take them to the car... nudge nudge, wink wink

DAY 3.
A cruisy saturday morning was short lived by the suggestion that we go to DFO (those factory outlets that are popping up everywhere).
So Tammie and Karz shopped while MJ and I ate some stuff and wandered. Karz showed me some bags she liked, so i said i'd buy her one of them and just take it to the car. ofcourse... i bought all 3 (its ok to go overboard on holidays yeah?) and karz also bought some shoes. we rapped up DFO in a little under 2 hours i think and then headed back to tammie's.

Around 1, we met up with Courtenay (who i think rocks) at a little cafe called lomah on union rd (ascot vale). the 3 of us (karz, mj and i) shared a pumpkin rissotto and some fat chips (which were just tops - with this lime mayo). Great catching up with Courts again - shes at uni now as well as working, pretty full on, but she'll get there.
Something interesting i noticed (well karz noticed it really) was on the menu - $25 to buy seeds and farming equipment for 3rd world countries (thru tear). it was worded in a great way - really reminded me of Steve Sjogren stuff. then we noticed that lomah was an acronym for land of milk and honey. pretty cool i think. it wasnt in your face, just subtle, but there... i liked it anyways.

So, after lunch tammie gave us a ride over to where kenn and andrea were staying. andrea took makhyah for the night and kenn, karz and i went into vodafone arena which for advertising reasons was only refererred to as the multi purpose venue (i insisted on calling it vodafone though, just to stick it to the man).

Our seats at the velodrome were a bit crazy. pretty scary to get to anyways. we were right up the back in a corner. but suprisingly they were good seats. we could see everything without hassles.

so we saw the mens (ryan bailey won) and womens sprints (the mears girls got silver and bronxz) - started at the semis and went all the way thru to gold medal - the drama of it was awesome. And also saw the mens team pursuit (the poms smashed us). It was much better value for money than the swimming (not that we paid for the swimming, but it was over twice the price for half the entertainment). they also had a victorian juniors race (the one with the sprints every 10 laps). good night in all!

So we caught up with Mum and Dad on the way out (they were at the gymastics at rod laver), and went and had coffee at Southgate. We rocked back over to spencer and elizabeth and caught the tram home. another big day...

let me mention this now

when you stay at friend's places theres somethings that maybe are a little substandard... but hey we were saving a huge amount of money on accomodation, so we didnt even mention it. i mention it here because, its worth mentioning here...
the bed we slept on is dead set art.
a futon
a futon that has the worlds craziest mattress on it.
if you sleep on the left side its ok, a little hard, but nothing too bad.
on the right however
the side is really high, so you roll into the middle
the only way to avoid this (i found), was to sorta hug into it sleeping with your back towards the middle.
we took turns at the dodgy side of the bed. when makhyah got in with us it made it particularly interesting.

its all part of the adventure

look at who you're sitting next to!!

DAY 2.
Running a bit late this morning, which would well prove to be a theme for our time away.
We managed to just miss the tram, but its no biggy in melbourne, i think the next one was about 8 minutes away. We caught the tram to swanston st, carlton to meet up with Mum and Dad (mine this time) for the first time in melbourne. Mum and Dad had offered us some tickets to go see the heats of the swimming that morning, and they would look after makhyah. sounds good to me...
so we had breakfast at this little place on swanston st. I had the obligatory smoothie (blueberries, yum) as well as some various things with cheese and ham on them. So... breakfast was short lived as we had to get to Albert Park for the swimming.

So, how many trams does it take to get from swanston st, to albert park. Thats a very interesting question. Look... can you blame me for picking on nakari about this, she pretty much gets things like this right all the time, i may as well have some fun with it... anyways... 6 trams later we got to melbourne park (my favourite was when we got off a tram, jumped on one that went back round the same corner we just went round - good stuff)...

We rocked into the swimming just on time. Mum and Dad said that they thought we would get good seats, as they bought them thru qantas. Well we had great seats, very front of the spectator section (the others we for teams and ppl like that). So we climb the grandstand, and nakari headed for our seats. I muttered something like "hey look who we're sitting next to". karz missed it, and sat down oblivious. "look who you're sitting next to" i whispered in her ear a little more clearly (diction aint my fortay sic). Karz had sat down next to Lisa Curry! Wow! We didnt talk to her, I thought she'd get annoyed. But we had a bit of a spy at times of her running sheet which has way more info than the normal program. So anyways... we watched a bunch of heats including the women's 100 free (go libby), and then headed off...
the line for trams was huge... but flowed extremely well... a real credit to the organisation of it all... a line that we were told would be about 45 minutes only took about 20 to get thru.

So it only took as 2 trams to get back to swanston st, where Dad and mj had just woken up from a nap. We went and got some lunch in Lygon st - i got chicken rissoto, yummo! (karz got gnochi - which she doesnt normally like, but it was dead set terrific). So after lunch we hit a supermarket for some awesome chilli red dip (its chilli, capsicum, cashews and parmesan - just terrific), then went home to chill for a bit.

Kenn and Andrea came round, and along with Greg and Tammie we had a bit of a barbie. definately needed by this time. Andrea bough some turkish bread from Alasia (spelling?) and with the dips we had it was just awesome. We crashed out not too late.

Wooli

so, we went down to wooli for a few days - its south of yamba, about 30 min from grafton.

anyways... we spent alot of time in the pool. makhyah loved the waterslide (just a straight one about 6 or 8 metres long), he was going down by himself on his belly in no time. we also went to the beach, played mini golf and just hung out (read here watching the cricket). also played a game i got for christmas from mum and dad - settlers of catan.

anyways, it was good to catch up with mum and dad (omi and pop) and just have some time to do not much.

back to bris

Lyd dropped me off at the airport at about 8.30 this morning. I have to say that i had a great time, and just wished that i could've stayed longer. Catching up with Dan and Lyd (and Ian - Lyd's Dad was in town), was awesome last night. And yeah, also great hanging with Caine Sally et al.

Anyways, I think that the last coupla days have been a hige time in my life - one that i will look back on with some significance. Things just feel a bit different, and i guess im seeing the world in a new way. And, I like it.

Away in Adelaide

Hey, I'm at Caine and Sally's at the moment. Didnt want to hog the computer too much, but i had achance to type up some entries that i have backdated.
More soon hopefully.

How to wreck a holiday

Why do I have such a sore foot!!! I woke up this morning in a lot of pain, and I’m beginning to suspect that I may have inherited my Opa’s ailment – Gout. Yay! I hope its just some pinched nerve or something.
Besides the foot, I’m having a great time with Caine, Sally, Shailer and Orlani. I wont get to see Dan and Lyd til latter in the week, but that’s cool. Its just good to be away. Spent the day today hobbling round the city. But I did have a good time, picked up a copy of Relevant magazine – more on this later possibly. Now just back at Caine and Sal’s place, chillin… Having Wok in a Box for dinner, so that’ll be good.

on a plane? or in the mountains somewhere

Its funny how things can affect us. On the plane to Adelaide, I was reading the Last Word and the Word after that, and they are staying in a little cottage in the mountains. Meanwhile I was listening to Xavier Rudd, and it just teleported me, in my mind to another place. In some ways I can say it was actually a spiritual moment. Its amazing how God can work when we are open to him.

Paranoia – thanx to the government and the media.

I’m not a racist, I really despise racism.
But, for some reason I got all paranoid that the Lebanese guy sitting next to me was reading a book on George Bush and the war in Iraq. Ended up talking to the guy, and he was good value. Its funny what we get fed and how it affects us… this is how racism grows, and well, im sorry that I fell into the trap.

It's not that bad... really...

Getting on the plane today, and my foot is still playing up, really sore and I have not idea why. Anyways, I ask for the exit row seat and the guy just checks to make sure I’m ok, not limping or anything… and well, I was hobbling fairly dramatically by this time. So I make some crack about the adrenaline that would kick in if I actually have to open the door. Get the seat and walk off with no limp… mind you I could have used some morphine after that.